Welcome to the new version of CaltechAUTHORS. Login is currently restricted to library staff. If you notice any issues, please email coda@library.caltech.edu
Published April 1988 | public
Journal Article

An Experimental Analysis of Unanimity in Public Goods Provision Mechanisms

Abstract

The paper reports on an experimental investigation of four methods of allocating public goods. The two basic processes studied are direct contribution and a public goods auction process. Both of these processes are studied with and without an additional unanimity feature. The results suggest that the auction process outperforms direct contribution. The effect of unanimity is to decrease the efficiency of both processes. Much of the paper is focused on an analysis of these results.

Additional Information

© 1988 The Society for Economic Analysis Limited. Funding provided by the National Science Foundation and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is gratefully acknowledged. We are indebted to John Ledyard for his helpful comments and suggestions. The comments of Mark Olson (JPL) on the statistical analysis and his computer programming assistance are acknowledged.

Additional details

Created:
August 19, 2023
Modified:
March 5, 2024