It is well known that private provision of a public good may lead to a high
er supply than that in some Pareto optimal allocation. The traditional view
attributes this "overprovision anomaly" to a specific kind of preferences.
The present paper, however, show's that preferences do not play a decisive
role. Assuming normality, overprovision will occur only if the distributio
n of income is extremely skewed and Pareto optimal allocations are not with
in the set of cost-share equilibria.