PROVISION OF STEP-LEVEL PUBLIC-GOODS UNDER UNCERTAINTY - A THEORETICAL-ANALYSIS

In a typical game examining voluntary contribution to the provision of step-level public goods, each member of a group of size n receives an endowment and then decides privately and anonymously how much of it t o contribute for the provision of the good. The good is provided to al l group members if and only if their total contribution is equal to, o r larger than some threshold. While previous research assumed that gro up members have complete information about the threshold, the present article relaxes this assumption by treating the threshold as a random variable with a commonly known distribution. Three models, a subjectiv e expected value model, a cooperative model and a strategic model are proposed to account for the individual's contribution decision. Genera l solutions are then derived and their predictions for the case of a u niformly distributed threshold are evaluated.