Public Goods Provision in an Experimental Environment

[Introduction] The problem of public goods provision has been central to many areas of economics. The traditional economic models, resting on assumptions about nonexcludability and single-period behavior, led directly to a prediction that social decision processes which rely upon voluntary individual payment for the provision of public goods cannot work [see, for example, Feldman ( 1980)]. According to such models people will not voluntarily pay. Because the profit incentive cannot operate naturally to induce supply in an ordinary market setting, public goods serve as a classic model of market failure and exist as the foundation for many modern theories of government.