A Practical Public Good Mechanism and Policing Application

61 Pages Posted: 25 Apr 2024

See all articles by Jordan Adamson

Jordan Adamson

Leipzig University, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics

Lucas Rentschler

Utah State University - Department of Economics and Finance

Date Written: April 23, 2024

Abstract

How can a government effectively police the population? We propose a modified Groves-Ledyard (1977) mechanism that estimates the demand for a public good using samples of the population and selects an approximately optimal quantity. We then test our mechanism in a virtual Phase-0 trial that mirrors existing experiments with known utility functions over generic commodities and find our mechanism performs extraordinarily well. We then test our mechanism in a Phase-1 experiment where participants choose the quantity of police in a rich virtual environment. We find that both our mechanism and the original yield the same police quantities, with ours having the additional benefit of being more practical to implement at scale.

Suggested Citation

Adamson, Jordan and Rentschler, Lucas, A Practical Public Good Mechanism and Policing Application (April 23, 2024). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4804107 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4804107

Jordan Adamson (Contact Author)

Leipzig University, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics ( email )

Grimmaische Str. 12
Leipzig, 04109
Germany

Lucas Rentschler

Utah State University - Department of Economics and Finance ( email )

Logan, UT 84322-1400
United States

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