Learning, public good provision, and the information trap

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Berentsen, Aleksander; Bruegger, Esther; Loertscher, Simon
• 署名单位: University of Melbourne; University of Basel
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2007.10.003
• 发表日期: 2008
• 页码: 998-1010
• 关键词: Public economics; learning; size of government

摘要

We consider an economy with uncertainty about the true production function for a public good. By using Bayes rule the economy can learn from experience. We show that it may learn the truth, but that it may also converge to an inefficient policy where no further inference is possible so that the economy is stuck in an information trap. We also show that our results are robust with respect to small experimentation. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.