Voluntary formation of communities for the provision of public projects

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Haimanko, O; Le Breton, M; Weber, S
• 署名单位: Southern Methodist University; Ben-Gurion University of the Negev; Universite de Toulouse; Universite Toulouse 1 Capitole; Southern Methodist University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/S0022-0531(03)00133-9
• 发表日期: 2004
• 页码: 1-34
• 关键词: Efficiency; sustainability; partitions; Public projects; configurations; core; personalized costs

摘要

In this paper we examine a group formation problem, where heterogeneous individuals partitioned themselves into communities, each choosing its own public project from the given space of feasible projects. The model is that of horizontal product differentiation where individuals display distinct preferences over the policy space. We consider the notion of efficient configuration that minimizes the total project-related costs and aggregate personalized costs of all individuals, and sustainable configurations, those are immune against breakaways by subgroups of individuals. Our main result is that, with a unidimensional project space and single-peaked personalized costs, every efficient partition is sustainable. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science (USA). All rights reserved.