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Contribution to a public good under subjective uncertainty
Author(s) -
Banerjee Anwesha,
Gravel Nicolas
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of public economic theory
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.809
H-Index - 32
eISSN - 1467-9779
pISSN - 1097-3923
DOI - 10.1111/jpet.12423
Subject(s) - comparative statics , economics , stochastic dominance , public good , optimism , dominance (genetics) , microeconomics , nash equilibrium , econometrics , psychology , social psychology , biochemistry , chemistry , gene
This paper examines how voluntary contributions to a public good are affected by the contributors' heterogeneity in beliefs about the uncertain impact of their contributions. It assumes that contributors have Savagian preferences that are represented by a two‐state‐dependent expected utility function and different beliefs about the benefit that will result from the sum of their contributions. We establish general comparative statics results regarding the effect of specific changes in the distribution of beliefs on the (unique) Nash equilibrium provision of the public good, under certain conditions imposed on the preferences. We specifically show that the equilibrium public good provision is increasing with respect to both first‐ and second‐order stochastic dominance changes in the distribution of beliefs. Hence, increasing the contributors' optimism about the uncertain benefit of their contributions increases aggregate public good provision, as does any homogenization of these beliefs around their mean.