Social preferences and public economics: Mechanism design when social preferences depend on incentives

A-Tier
Journal: Journal of Public Economics
Year: 2008
Volume: 92
Issue: 8-9
Pages: 1811-1820

Authors (2)

Score contribution per author:

2.011 = (α=2.01 / 2 authors) × 2.0x A-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

Social preferences such as altruism, reciprocity, intrinsic motivation and a desire to uphold ethical norms are essential to good government, often facilitating socially desirable allocations that would be unattainable by incentives that appeal solely to self-interest. But experimental and other evidence indicates that conventional economic incentives and social preferences may be either complements or substitutes, explicit incentives crowding in or crowding out social preferences. We investigate the design of optimal incentives to contribute to a public good under these effects would make either more or less use of explicit incentives, by comparison to a naive planner who assumes they are absent.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:eee:pubeco:v:92:y:2008:i:8-9:p:1811-1820
Journal Field
Public
Author Count
2
Added to Database
2026-02-02