On cost sharing in the provision of a binary and excludable public good

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Article
Author/s: 
Jordi Massó, Antonio Nicolò, Arunava Sen, Tridib Sharma, Levent Ülkü
Journal of Economic Theory
Issue number: 
115
Publisher: 
Elsevier
Year: 
2015
Journal pages: 
30-49
We study efficiency and fairness properties of the equal cost sharing with maximal participation (ECSMP) mechanism in the provision of a binary and excludable public good. According to the maximal welfare loss criterion, the ECSMP is optimal within the class of strategyproof, individually rational and no-deficit mech-anisms only when there are two agents. In general the ECSMP mechanism is not optimal: we provide a class of mechanisms obtained by symmetric perturbations of ECSMP with strictly lower maximal welfare loss. We show that if one of two possible fairness conditions is additionally imposed, the ECSMP mechanism becomes optimal.
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