A laboratory study of voluntary public goods provision with imperfect monitoring and communication

This paper reports 17 laboratory sessions that introduce imperfect contribu tion monitoring in the voluntary contributions mechanism. In the imperfect monitoring treatment subjects learn others' public good contributions every six periods, and the experiment also includes face-to-face verbal communic ation as a treatment variable. The results demonstrate that improved contri bution monitoring does not increase contributions without verbal communicat ion, and that communication (even with imperfect monitoring) dramatically i mproves subjects' ability to efficiently provide the public good. The resul ts have implications for the design of development programs that feature a prominent role for collective action. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All ri ghts reserved. JEL classification: H41.