An empirical test of neutrality and the crowding-out hypothesis

This paper tests Warr's neutrality hypothesis that the voluntary provision of a public good is independent of the distribution of income. Specifically, I test the null hypothesis of neutrality against the alternative that total contributions to a public good will be larger the less equally income is distributed. To test this hypothesis, a new data set is constructed by merging data on total voluntary contributions to individual public radio stations with 1990 Census data on the income distribution in each station's listening area. I find that voluntary contributions increase as income inequality rises.     

Free riders or easy riders?: An examination of the voluntary provision of public radio

This paper tests the widely accepted hypothesis that when a pure public good is voluntarily provided incentives to free ride increase with the number of individuals consuming the good. Specifically, I use unique data on the number of listeners and contributors to public radio to test two hypotheses. First I test whether the proportion of contributors falls as group size increases and second I test whether contributions per contributor falls as group size increases. I find that increases in group size result in significantly more free riding. However, I also find that group size has no effect on contributions per contributor.     

Infinitely repeated contests: How strategic interaction affects the efficiency of governance

Contests over the scope and strength of regulation and governance are commonplace – and commonly repeated. The same players vie for the same government prize year after year: for example, environmental standards, government contracts, research grants, and public good provision. The open question is whether more rents are dissipated in repeated regulatory contests than onetime competitions. This question matters for regulation and governance because societies should design policies to waste the fewest scarce resources. According to some, the answer is “no”, but others say “yes”– more resources are wasted when people compete repeatedly for the same government prize. Herein, we use two game theoretic equilibrium concepts to help untangle the answer. Our results suggest non‐myopic contestants are more likely to behave as partners than rivals – provided the context is relatively sterile. Several common complications help break up the tacit partnership, including a disparity in relative ability, a shrinking prize, and additional players.     

The effects of group size and income on contributions to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting

This paper examines the extent to which individual contributions to public television are explained by the size of the audience which receives the individual station's television signal. It also incorporates the effects of income on contributions to public television in order to assess the combined effects of income and group size on contributions to public goods.The existing literature on contributions to public goods differs from this paper in several respects. First, this study uses field data to test the effects of group size on a public good. The majority of the existing literature on public goods contributions is based on experimental data. Most of this literature addresses the issue of free riding behavior, not the effects on contributions of different sized groups. Finally, the theory of group size developed in prior work does not address the issue of how contributions differ for groups which are very different in size.     

Not it: opting out of voluntary coalitions that provide a public good

Most coalitions that form to increase contributions to a public good do not require full participation by all users of the public good, and therefore create incentives for free riding. If given the opportunity to opt out of a voluntary coalition, in theory, agents should try to be among the first to do so, forcing the remaining undecided agents to bear the cost of participating in the coalition. This study tests the predicted sequence of participation decisions in voluntary coalitions using real-time threshold public goods experiments. We find that subjects’ behavior is more consistent with the theoretical predictions when the difference in payoffs between coalition members and free-riding non-members is relatively large.     

Remembering JPAM's first editor,Raymond Vernon

Raymond Vernon, the founding editor of the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, died on August 26, 1999, at the age of 85. He was Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs Emeritus at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government at the time of his death, having served on the faculties of various schools at Harvard since 1959. He will be remembered for his contributions to a number of public policy areas. For example, in the late 1950s he led a research team that produced a study of the future of the New York metropolitan area, regarded as a landmark in the field of urban planning. In the last two decades he wrote extensively on the phenomenon of multinational corporations. His last book appeared in 1998 and was awarded a prize in 1999 by the Academy of International Business.     

Voluntary contributions with imperfect information: An experimental study

This paper uses a two-person linear voluntary contribution mechanism with stochastic marginal benefits from a public good to examine the effect of imperfect information on contributions. Estimates of individual risk preferences are obtained using data from second-price auctions over lotteries. The results show that limited information about the value of the public good significantly lowers average contributions in all periods but the last. Moreover, the results support the interpretation that subjects bid “as if” they were risk averse, and suggest that “as if” risk-averse behavior is negatively correlated with willingness to contribute.     

Free riding with discrete and continuous public goods: Some experimental evidence

Two experimental designs were employed in which subjects were offered either a “discrete” public good, for which group contributions must meet a provision point before subjects receive payoffs; and a “continuous” public good, which returned 30 percent of group contributions to each subject at all contributions levels. Free riding, or non-contribution, is a dominant strategy in the continuous case. Non-contribution is not a dominant strategy in the discrete case; there are multiple equilibria. Contribution levels were similar in both cases, and did not vary significantly with method of payment (hypothetical versus real money); earnings, however, were higher in the continuous and realmoney versions of the experiment. Subjects' demographic characteristics made little difference to contribution patterns. The most significant determinant of contributions was the round of the “game.” Roughly speaking, subjects contributed less the longer they played, regardless of other factors.     

From weakest-link to best-shot: The voluntary provision of public goods

It has traditionally been assumed that the socially available amount X of a public good is the simple sum of the separate amounts x _i produced by the i = 1, ..., I members of the community. But there are many other possibilities of practical importance. Among them are: (i) Weakest-link rule, where the socially available amount is the minimum of the quantities individually provided, and (ii) Best-shot rule, where the socially available amount is the maximum of the individual quantities. The former tends to arise in linear situations, where each individual has a veto on the total to be provided (e.g., if each is responsible for one link of a chain); the latter tends to arise when there is a single prize of overwhelming importance for the community, with any individual's effort having a chance of securing the prize. In comparison with the standard Summation formula of ordinary public-good theory, it is shown that underprovision of the public good tends to considerably moderated when the Weakest-link function is applicable, but aggravated when the Best-shot function is applicable. In time of disaster, where the survival of the community may depend upon each person's doing his duty, the conditions for applicability of the Weakest-link rule are approximated. This circumstance explains the historical observation that disaster conditions tend to elicit an extraordinary amount of unselfish behavior.     

An interplay between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations on voluntary contributions to a public good in a large economy

We develop a model of voluntary contributions to a public good in a large economy where peoples?? preferences consist of extrinsic and intrinsic payoffs. The model considers (i) the interplay between the two payoffs and (ii) the possibility that public provision discourages moral motivation in the intrinsic payoff (motivational shift). We show that a wide variety of crowd-out/in occurs due to public provision within a single framework, and its occurrence depends on the magnitude of motivational shift and the characteristics of the public good in relation to private goods in the extrinsic payoff.     

Group specific public goods, orchestration of interest groups with free riding

We consider a situation in which two groups contest group-specific public goods. Each member of the group may have a different valuation of the prize. Our model can be interpreted as the contestants’ cost of lobbying efforts being non-linear, or the returns to their efforts being decreasing. We show that the level of free-riding depends on the return of the investment. We consider the situation under which one group initiates a contest to which different individuals and/or groups can be added. The question we pose is what is the optimal structure of additional groups?     

The voluntary contributions mechanism with real time revisions

Experimental results are presented showing the effects of allowing real time revisions of voluntary contributions for the provision of a public good. Four public good payoff functions are examined, each of which generates specific equilibria. Evidence of increased provision of the public good is demonstrated for: (i) the case in which revisions are limited to increases and a provision point exists, and also (ii) when there is a high initial marginal return from the public good.The author wishes to express his appreciation for the reviews and comments made by James Cox, Mark Isaac, Vernon Smith, anonymous referees and participants at the Public Choice/ESA conference in San Francisco, April 1988. The author is also very grateful for the economic support of the Economic Science Laboratory at the University of Arizona.     

Free-rider effects in rent-seeking groups competing for public goods

This paper studies individual behavior within a group when there is rent-seeking and groups compete in the selection of a public good — a variant of the traditional public goods problem. The situation is different from traditional public goods because an individual may not receive no reward for contribution to the group if the group does not win. Based on theory, the optimal contribution varies strategically depending on the characteristics of the situation, individual risk preferences, income, and subjective probability of winning. Individual contributions or bids toward a group objective were tested experimentally. Results showed that use of a demand revealing mechanism did not produce a significant difference in individual contributions to group efforts when the level of reward was low and when rewards were indirect. However, the demand revealing mechanism caused a significant difference in bids when rewards were high and direct, thus indicating free-riding behavior.     

Learning by doing in contests

We introduce learning by doing in a dynamic contest. Contestants compete in an early round and can use the experience gained to reduce effort cost in a subsequent contest. A contest designer can decide how much of the prize mass to distribute in the early contest and how much to leave for the later one in order to maximize total efforts. We show how this division affects effort at each stage, and present conditions that characterize the optimal split. There is a trade off here, since a large early prize increases first period efforts leading to a substantial reduction in second round effort cost; on the other hand, there is less of the prize mass to fight over in the second round, reducing effort at that stage. The results are indicative of the fact that the designer often prefers to leave most of the prize mass for the second contest to reap the gains from the learning by doing effect.     

Elections with contribution-maximizing candidates

Analyses of campaign contributions usually follow the Downsian model to suppose that candidates seek contributions to win elections. This paper takes the opposite approach, by assuming that each candidate aims to maximize the contributions he collects. A citizen contributes to a candidate with the aim of increasing that candidate’s chances of winning. These assumptions generate several results: in equilibrium citizens make campaign contributions; the positions the candidates adopt differ; because the rich are willing to make larger contributions than the poor, the candidates adopt positions the rich prefer. A cap on political contributions reduces spending by voters and reduces the distance between the positions adopted by the candidates; public funding of campaign contributions causes aggregate spending to increase.     

When Do Leaders Free-Ride? Business Experience and Contributions to Collective Defense

The logic of free-riding expects that individuals will underinvest in public goods, but people often behave in ways that are inconsistent with this prediction. Why do we observe variation in free-riding behavior? This study addresses this question by examining contributions to an important international public good—collective defense in military alliances. It develops a behavioral theory of free-riding in which the beliefs of world leaders are important for explaining investments in public goods. The argument holds that leaders with business experience make smaller contributions to collective defense because they are egoistic and more comfortable relying on a powerful ally for their defense. An analysis of defense expenditures in 17 non-U.S. members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from 1952 to 2014 provides evidence consistent with the theory. The findings suggest that leaders with business experience are more likely than other heads of government to act as self-interested utility maximizers.     

Public goods, group size, and the degree of rivalry

It is well established that the provision of a pure public good is increasing in group size if the good is normal. What I show is that if the good exhibits even a small degree of rivalry, then the individual level of consumption of the public good falls to zero in a large group. Thus, a strong version of Olson’s large group hypothesis applies to anything other than a pure public good. While individual consumption of the public good goes to zero in a large group, there is not a monotonicity result. If it is initially small, an increase in the group size may lead to an increase in the individual consumption of the public good.     

A generalized model of rent-seeking behavior

In this paper I present a formal analysis of rent-seeking games in which the players' valuations for the prize are represented as vectors. The players in this game are risk neutral and may not be indifferent to who wins the contestable rent if it is someone else. Both Tullock's original rent-seeking model and the public goods rent-seeking model by Katz et al. turn out to be special cases of this more general model.     

Pursuing Consilience: Using Behavioral Public Administration to Connect Research on Bureaucratic Red Tape,Administrative Burden,and Regulation

Behavioral public administration (BPA) research aspires not only to draw on developments in behavioral science but also, importantly, to address central themes in public administration. By focusing a symposium on bureaucratic red tape, administrative burden, and regulation, we encouraged BPA scholarship to engage with fundamental public administration topics that are also relevant for the broader literature on organizations and management. Indeed, the symposium contributions demonstrate how BPA can better meld the behavioral science and public administration literatures. They expand on existing conceptions of BPA, with respect to both methodology and topical focus, and provide a basis for demarcating what might and might not be usefully described as BPA. The symposium contributions provide a blueprint for how BPA research might usefully evolve and the introduction offers a philosophical reflection on the future development of BPA and behavioral science.     

It's About Time: Catching Method Up to Meaning—The Usefulness of Narrative Inquiry in Public Administration Research

As a form of interpretive research, narrative inquiry contributes to the pursuit of high-quality public administration scholarship, along with other forms of explanatory research that have dominated the field. In this article we discuss the unique features of narrative inquiry, review how this research orientation has been used in public administration, and use our experience with a national, multimodal, multiyear research project on social-change leadership in the United States to identify and illustrate the contributions of narrative inquiry to address two key issues in the field: the concern with good research and the aspiration to cultivate a meaningful connection between researchers and practitioners in the field.