Threshold Public Goods

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Friedel Bolle (†)
• Subject Area: Economic Theory
• Term: from 2015 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 277734396

Public goods which are produced only if a minimum amount of support (critical mass) is provided for its production are called "threshold public goods". If the voluntary supporters can provide only nothing or a fixed amount of their resource, we call these goods Binary Threshold Public Goods (BTPGs). Examples are the - Participation in common holidays, social projects, strikes- Ratification of the Kyoto protocol with fixed reduction commitments- Support of proposals in parliaments or owner assemblies- Signing a public request"Contributing" can be accompanied by positive or negative (opportunity) costs. These can be psychic costs, for example if a member of parliament votes against his own credo, because supporting his party promotes his career, or costs can consist of time and money as, for example, participating in a school project concerning one’s children. Of course, the production of the BTPG is preceeded by a pre-play phase where the public good is specified and discussed with respect to means and ends. This phase will be commented but it is not part of the theoretical and experimental investigations.In our project, we want to gain theoretical insights based on a rather general model. Hypotheses for our experimental investigations should be guided by theory.Concerning our request for extension of the original project:Our main goals have not changed. We want to complete our results and test a theoretical statement which we did not know at the time of the original application.- Theory: BTPGs have a plethora of equilibria. For heuristic/plausible as well as for systematic equilibrium selection the attributes of these equilibria are crucial. Further investigations are necessary.- Theory/behavior: Theoretically, the efficiency of simultaneous and sequential voting is completely different. Until the end of the project we will have completed experiments with simultaneous voting, in the extension phase we want to conduct experiments with sequential voting.- We have unused data from personality tests and elicitations of emotions. The usage of these data requires extensive discussions not only about meaning and connection with decisions, but also about statistical methods. (In our previous project "Power and Responsibility" the usage of these data was connected with additional insights and publications.)

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: New Zealand, United Kingdom
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Simon Kemp; Professor Dr. Jonathan Tan
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Alexander Kritikos