TY - JOUR
T1 - Public goods, property rights, and investment incentives
T2 - An experimental investigation
AU - Kusterer, David J.
AU - Schmitz, Patrick W.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Author(s)
PY - 2020/9
Y1 - 2020/9
N2 - How should ownership rights be allocated in public-good settings? We report data from a laboratory experiment with 480 participants that was designed to test a public-good version of the property rights theory based on incomplete contracting. Consider two parties, one of whom can invest in the provision of a public good. The parties value the public good differently. In the literature it has been argued that more investments will be made if the high-valuation party is the owner, regardless of whether or not this party is the investor. Our experimental results cast some doubts on the robustness of this conclusion.
AB - How should ownership rights be allocated in public-good settings? We report data from a laboratory experiment with 480 participants that was designed to test a public-good version of the property rights theory based on incomplete contracting. Consider two parties, one of whom can invest in the provision of a public good. The parties value the public good differently. In the literature it has been argued that more investments will be made if the high-valuation party is the owner, regardless of whether or not this party is the investor. Our experimental results cast some doubts on the robustness of this conclusion.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85087857494&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jebo.2020.06.009
DO - 10.1016/j.jebo.2020.06.009
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85087857494
SN - 0167-2681
VL - 177
SP - 514
EP - 532
JO - Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
JF - Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
ER -