Equal factor equivalence in economies with multiple public goods

We reconsider the problem of provision and cost-sharing of multiple public goods. The efficient equal factor equivalent allocation rule makes every agent indifferent between what he receives and the opportunity of choosing the bundle of public goods subject to the constraint of paying r times its cost, where r is set as low as possible. We show that this rule is characterized in economies with a continuum of agents by efficiency, a natural upper bound on everyone's welfare, and a property of solidarity with respect to changes in population and preferences. Received: 3 August 1995 / Accepted : 29 April 1997     

Natural implementation in public goods economies

In this paper, we identify necessary and sufficient conditions for social choice correspondences to be Nash implemented by “natural” mechanisms in economies with arbitrary numbers of private and public goods. We find that when there exist only one public good and an arbitrary number of private goods, the Lindahl correspondence is implementable by a natural quantity mechanism in which each agent announces his own consumption bundle of private goods and input vectors for public goods. However, regardless of the numbers of private and public goods, the Pareto correspondence is not implementable even by any natural price ⁿ -quantity mechanism in which each agent reports a price vector of private goods and all agents’ personalized price vectors of public goods, in addition to his own consumption bundle of private goods and input vectors for public goods.     

Axiomatization of ratio equilibria in public good economies

Using consistency properties, we characterize the cost-sharing scheme arising from the ratio equilibrium concept for economies with public goods. The characterization turns out to be surprisingly simple and direct. In contrast to most axiomatic characterizations based on reduced games and consistency properties, our characterization requires that in the reduced game, the players take as given the proportions of the costs paid by the members of the complementary player set, rather than their utility levels. Received: 4 July 1996/Accepted: 28 March 2001     

Maximal domain for strategy-proof probabilistic rules in economies with one public good

We consider the problem of choosing a level of a public good on an interval of the real line among a group of agents. A probabilistic rule chooses a probability distribution over the interval for each preference profile. We investigate strategy-proof probabilistic rules in the case where distributions are compared based on stochastic dominance relations. First, on a “minimally rich domain”, we characterize the so-called probabilistic generalized median rules (Ehlers et al., J Econ Theory 105:408–434, 2002) by means of stochastic-dominance (sd) strategy-proofness and ontoness. Next, we study how much we can enlarge a domain to allow for the existence of sd-strategy-proof probabilistic rules that satisfy ontoness and the no-vetoer condition. We establish that the domain of “convex” preferences is the unique maximal domain including a minimally rich domain for these properties.     

Linear cost sharing in economies with non-Samuelsonian public goods: Core equivalence

 We consider an economy with non-Samuelsonian public goods and we focus on linear cost sharing. In a linear cost sharing equilibrium all agents in the economy optimize given a certain fixed cost share to be contributed towards the provision of public goods in the economy. Hence, each agent pays a certain fraction of the total establishment costs of public goods and these cost shares are common knowledge. We show that for a certain fixed contribution scheme the resulting linear cost share equilibria are equivalent to corresponding core allocations, in which the core is based on the integral of the individual cost shares. We also show that there is no equivalence of the Foley core with cost share equilibria, even in well-behaved large economies. Received: 16 August 1995/Accepted: 29 July 1996     

A characterization of strategy-proof social choice functions for economies with pure public goods

We characterize strategy-proof social choice functions when individuals have strictly quasi-concave, continuous and satiated utility functions on convex subsets of IR ^m , representing preferences for the provision of m pure public goods. When specialized to the case m=1, these assumptions amount to requiring that preferences are single peaked, and for such a domain there exists a wide class of strategy-proof social choice functions. These were studied by Moulin (1980) under strong additional assumptions. Our first results characterize the complete class, after an appropriate extension of the single-peakedness condition. The new characterization retains the flavour of Moulin's elegant representation theorem. For the general m-dimensional case, previous results have shown that there is no efficient, strategy-proof, nondictatorial social choice function, even within the domain restrictions under consideration (Border and Jordan 1983; Zhou 1991). In fact, Zhou's powerful result indicates that nondictatorial strategy-proof s.c.f.'s will have a range of dimension one. This allows us to conclude with a complete characterization of all strategy-proof s.c.f.'s on IR ^m , because restrictions of preferences from our admissible class to one dimensional subsets satisfy the slightly generalized notion of single-peakedness that is used in our characterization for the case m=1. We feel that a complete knowledge of the class of strategy-proof mechanisms, in this as well as in other contexts, is an important step in the analysis of the trade-offs between strategy-proofness and other performance criteria, like efficiency.This paper was written while both authors were visiting GREMAQ, Université des Sciences Sociales de Toulouse. We are thankful for its hospitality and good research atmosphere. Barberà's work is supported by the Instituto de Estudios Fiscales and by research grant PB89-0294 from the Secretaría de Estado de Universidades e Investigación, Spain. Jackson acknowledges the support of NSF grant SES8921409. We thank Jacques Crémer, Beth Allen, John Weymark and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on earlier drafts.     

Equilibrium in abstract political economies: with an application to a public good economy with voting

Consider an abstract political economy which has a collective choice rule together with strategic interactions among players. We prove that there exists an equilibrium in such an economy by synthesizing an equilibrium existence theorem in generalized games by Shafer and Sonnenschein (1975) and a voting core existence theorem in simple games by Schofield (1984, 1989). The theorem can be applied to a public good economy where public good provisions are determined by a class of voting rule.Thanks are due to David Austen-Smith, Jeffrey Banks, Marcus Berliant, Steve Ching, Ryo-Ichi Nagahisa, Mary Beth Savio, Norman Schofield, and Tomoichi Shinotsuka. Detailed comments from an anonymous referee of the journal are gratefully acknowledged. Errors are, of course, my own.     

世行项目环境评价的公众参与

一、世行项目背景 世界银行是一个世界性的非赢利金融组织,提供低息或无息贷款,主要用于支持发展中国家的城市建设.世界银行的宗旨是以人为本.世界银行以往注重能源和交通,现在开始注重环境和教育.利用世行贷款是解决国内建设资金不足的重要手段之一,利用世行贷款进行城市建设是受到天津市政府和广大老百姓支持和拥护的重要项目.天津市利用世行贷款项目第一期基础设施项目实施近10年,已经完成,取得了斐然的成绩,创造了良好的经济效益和社会效益.现在,天津市政府已申请到第二批世行贷款继续用于基础设施建设.二期世行贷款项目总建设资金约30亿元人民币,其中利用世行贷款1.5亿美元,包括交通和环境等9个建设项目,另外还包括几个技术援助和培训项目.该项目的顺利实施将会对天津市的市政建设起到良好的推动作用.     

Gendered economies: Transferring private gender roles into the public realm through rural community development

This paper considers the important issue of women's economic participation in rural community development and regeneration. The paper explores the economic lives and actions of women residents in “Ilston”, a village in the Northumberland Rural Coalfield. The women's narratives illustrate the economic connections between private and public spheres, represented respectively by the household and community-led regeneration initiatives. The connections were realised through a female responsibility for household budget management, which incorporated the protection and maintenance of their personal and household economic status within the community. This role was extended into the public sphere through female responsibility for community group and project fund raising, management and subsequent maintenance of the community group's economic status. This practice formed part of the women's constructed economic identity(ies) within the community, and in turn feminised economic practices regarding community-led development and regeneration in the village.     

On monotonicity in economies with indivisible goods

We consider the problem of fair allocation in economies with indivisible objects that may or may not be desirable (for instance, activities that may or may not be pleasurable but have to be carried out unless there are not enough agents for that). We search for efficient solutions satisfying two additional properties. First, each agent should find his bundle at least as desirable as the bundle that would be assigned to him in the hypothetical economy in which all agents have preferences identical to his, under equal treatment of equals and efficiency. In a preliminary step, we show that there is no logical relation between this requirement and no-envy, and between it and egalitarian-equivalence. We also establish the existence of efficient allocations satisfying it. The second property, object monotonicity, says that the availability of additional objects either has a negative impact on everyone's welfare, or it has a positive impact on everyone's welfare. We show that there is no object-monotonic selection from the correspondence that associates with each economy its set of efficient allocations meeting an even weaker version of the bound.I am grateful to Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Koichi Tadenuma, and a referee for their very helpful comments.     

Coalitional strategy-proof and resource-monotonic solutions for multiple assignment problems

We consider the problem of allocating indivisible objects when agents may desire to consume more than one object and monetary transfers are not possible. Each agent receives a set of objects and free disposal is allowed. We are interested in allocation rules that satisfy appealing properties from an economic and social point of view. Our main result shows that sequential dictatorships are the only efficient and coalitional strategy-proof solutions to the multiple assignment problem. Adding resource-monotonicity narrows this class down to serial dictatorships.We thank Francois Maniquet, two anonymous referees, and the participants of the GREBE-FRANCQUI Summer School on Axiomatic Resource Allocation Theory, held in Namur, Belgium, for their comments.     

The replacement principle in economies with indivisible goods

 We consider the problem of allocating a list of indivisible goods and some amount of an infinitely divisible good among agents with equal rights on these resources, and investigate the implications of the following requirement on allocation rules: when the preferences of some of the agents change, all agents whose preferences are fixed should (weakly) gain, or they should all (weakly) lose. This condition is an application of a general principle of solidarity discussed in Thomson (1990b) under the name “replacement principle”. We look for selections from the no-envy solution satisfying this property. We show that in the general case, when the number of objects is arbitrary, there is no such selection. However, in the one-object case (a single prize), up to Pareto-indifference, there is only one selection from the no-envy solution satisfying the property. Such a solution always selects an envy-free allocation at which the winner of the prize is indifferent between his bundle and the losers’ common bundle. Received: 15 May 1995 / Accepted: 5 June 1996     

Lorenz undominated allocations for TU-games: The weighted Coalitional Lorenz Solutions

In this paper we introduce and study the w-Coalitional Lorenz Solutions to identify the similarities and differences between the prenucleolus and the Shapley value. The similarity is that they both use egalitarian criteria over coalitions. The two main differences are: the prenucleolus and the Shapley value use different egalitarian criteria, and they weight the coalitions differently when applying the criteria. Received: 27 October 2000/Accepted: 2 October 2001     

Strategy-proof allocation mechanisms for economies with an indivisible good

We consider economies with a single indivisible good and money. We characterize the set of mechanisms that satisfy strategy-proofness, individual rationality, equal compensation, and demand monotonicity. There are three types of mechanisms which have the following properties: (i) they determine the allocation of monetary compensation depending on who receives the indivisible good; (ii) they allocate the indivisible good to one of the pre-specified (one or two) agent(s); and (iii) they disregard preferences of agents other than the pre-specified agent(s). This result implies that the presence of an indivisible good induces serious asymmetry in mechanisms. Received: 26 March 1996 / Accepted: 23 September 1997     

Coalitionally strategy-proof rules in allotment economies with homogeneous indivisible goods

We consider the allotment problem of homogeneous indivisible goods among agents with single-peaked and risk-averse von Neumann–Morgenstern expected utility functions. We establish that a rule satisfies coalitional strategy-proofness, same-sideness, and strong symmetry if and only if it is the uniform probabilistic rule. By constructing an example, we show that if same-sideness is replaced by respect for unanimity, this statement does not hold even with the additional requirements of no-envy, anonymity, at most binary, peaks-onlyness and continuity. We would like to thank the associate editor and two anonymous referees whose comments and suggestions significantly improve this paper. We are also grateful to Masaki Aoyagi, Kazuhiko Hashimoto, Hervé Moulin, Hiroo Sasaki, Koji Takamiya, William Thomson, Takuma Wakayama as well as other participants at the Eighth International Meeting of the Society for Social Choice and Welfare in Istanbul, the 2006 Autumn Annual Meeting of the Japanese Economic Association in Osaka, and Yokohama National University Seminar of Economic Theory for their helpful comments. We acknowledge financial supports from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science via the Research Fellowship for Young Scientist (Hatsumi) and the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (Serizawa).     

Migration between imperfectly competitive economies

We study the role of bargaining as a barrier to migration in the equilibrium of a two-region world with imperfectly competitive labour markets. Equilibrium migration is jointly determined by relative labour market bargaining powers, productivity and costs of migration. If migrants complement host factors, higher migration generally benefits both source and host economies. An enhancement of the bargaining power of typically weak migrant workers in host regions improves welfare.     

Evaluation of community-based AIDS education and risk reduction projects in ethnic and racial minority communities: A survey of projects funded by the U.S. public health service

The purpose of this study was to describe proposed program evaluation methods used to determine effectiveness of selected federally funded AIDS education and risk reduction interventions focused on ethnic and racial minority populations. Funding for AIDS prevention programs has grown significantly since 1985, when the first allocation of $11 million was earmarked for general AIDS prevention and education. In 1987, funds specifically targeting minority populations were set aside from AIDS prevention and education programs. Nine agencies/divisions within the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) were identified as having funded AIDS prevention and education projects targeted toward ethnic and racial minority populations. The grants and contracts reviewed for this study were limited to those programs receiving Federal funding through DHHS. Few programs provided information within the broader context of sex education and drug education. The modification of needle-sharing behavior among IV drug users and unprotected sex with an IV drug user were the two most frequent risk factors targeted. All 63 programs used at least one formative evaluation method. The most frequently used formative techniques were monitoring achievement of project objectives and counting the number of people participating in program activities. Forty programs counted the amount of AIDS literature distributed. Thirty-three programs conducted a baseline assessment of AIDS knowledge, and 33 programs conducted a baseline assessment of risk behaviors for HIV infection. Results from this study support the National Academy of Sciences recommendation that while summative evaluation will ultimately be valuable, it would be premature to begin developing outcome evaluation strategies at the present time. It is incumbent upon program planners and evaluators to ensure that premature program evaluations are not made in an effort to eliminate direct federal funding of minority community-based strategies to stop the spread of HIV infection.     

Equity and efficiency in non-convex economies

The objective of this paper is to consider the following question. Does the presence of increasing returns introduce a fundamental trade-off between equity and efficiency objectives? We show that if the no-envy notion of Foley (1967) is taken as the equity criterion and Pareto optimality as the efficiency criterion, then the answer is yes; there exist economies with increasing returns and well-behaved preferences (and no agent-specific inputs) in which there do not exist any envy-free and Pareto optimal allocations. We also propose a weakening of the no-envy criterion and prove that this weaker equity notion is compatible with Pareto optimality in general non-convex economies.     

The unique informational efficiency of the competitive mechanism in economies with production

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the informational requirements of resource allocation processes for convex production economies. First, we establish a lower bound of the message space of an informationally decentralized mechanism that realizes Pareto efficient allocations over the class of classical production economies. Then, it is shown that this lower bound is exactly the size of the message space of the competitive (Walrasian) mechanism, and thus the competitive mechanism is informationally efficient for general neoclassical production economies in the sense that it uses the smallest message space among the class of resource allocation processes that are informationally decentralized and realize Pareto optimal allocations. Further, it is shown that the competitive mechanism is the unique informationally efficient decentralized mechanism that realizes Pareto efficient and individually rational allocations. The results obtained in the paper may shed light on the socialist controversy between Mises-Hayek and Lange-Lerner.I wish to thank an anonymous referee and the participants at the 2001 Decentralization Conference for valuable comments. This is a reversion of an earlier paper entitled, “The Competitive Mechanism is the Unique Informationally Efficient Process for Economies with Production”. Financial support from the Texas Advanced Research Program as well as from the Bush Fellow Summer Research Program, the Private Enterprise Research Center, and the Lewis Faculty Fellowship at Texas A&M University is gratefully acknowledged.

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