We present high resolution H41 hydrogen recombination line observations of the 1 2 (3 pc) region surrounding Sagittarius A (Sgr A ) at 92 GHz using the Millimeter Array at the Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO) with an angular resolution of 7 3 and velocity resolution of 13 km s−1. New observations of H31 , H35 , H41 and H44 lines were obtained using the NRAO 12-m telescope, and their relati...

This paper investigates the efficacy of a punishment mechanism in promoting cooperative behaviour in a public goods game when enforcement of punishment is uncertain. Experimental studies have found that a sanctioning system can induce individuals to adopt behaviour deemed as socially acceptable. Yet, our experiment shows that a sanctioning system cannot promote cooperative behaviour if enforcem...

The fact that many people take it upon themselves to impose costly punishment on free riders helps to explain why collective action sometimes succeeds despite the prediction of received theory. But while individually imposed sanctions lead to higher contributions in public goods experiments, there is usually little or no net efficiency gain from them, because punishment is costly and at times m...

This paper studies the mechanism design problem for the class of Bayesian environments where agents do care for the well-being of others. For these environments, we fully characterize interim efficient mechanisms and examine their properties. This set of mechanisms is compelling, since interim efficient mechanisms are the best in the sense that there is no other mechanism which generates unanim...

Open source software, developed by volunteers, appears counter to the conventional wisdom that without ownership rights or government intervention, public goods will not be efficiently provided. But complexity makes a difference: contracts are incomplete and ownership rights do not necessarily elicit socially optimal effort. I consider three mechanisms that improve the provision of complex soft...

This paper studies the dynamics by which populations with heterogeneous preferences for public good provision sort themselves into communities. I conduct laboratory experiments to consider which institutions best facilitate efficient self-organization when residents can move freely between locations. I find that institutions requiring all residents of a community to pay equal taxes enable subje...

We consider a self-administered organization characterized by a principal elected by the agents and establish conditions under which self-administration leads to either stronger or weaker incentives than an organization which only pursues exogenous objectives such as profit maximization. While the output of the organization that accrues to society is controlled by the effort of the agents and b...

In this paper we consider Bayesian implementation of rational-expectations Lindahl allocations for economic environments with public goods when agents are incompletely informed about environments. We construct a continuous and feasible mechanism whose Bayesian equilibrium allocations coincide with rational-expectations Lindahl allocations. We not only allow the types of individuals to be unknow...

Under incomplete information about (independent) private valuations of a public good, we establish sufficient conditions under which, despite the incentive to free ride on future contributors, the expected total amount of voluntary contributions is higher when agents contribute sequentially (observing prior contributions) rather than simultaneously. We establish this in a conventional framework...

This paper examines whether decentralization increases the responsiveness of public investment to local needs using a unique database from Bolivia. Empirical tests show that investment patterns in human capital and social services changed significantly after decentralization. These changes are strongly and positively related to objective indicators of need. Nationally, these changes were driven...