Abstract
We present a model of altruistically-minded—yet rational—players contributing to a public good. A key feature is the tension between altruism and crowding-out effects. We present three main results: (1) More altruistic behaviour often reduces social welfare; (2) It is almost always optimal for a player to act more selfishly than her true preference; (3) A player’s optimal altruistic commitment is often low or zero—even with strongly altruistic preferences. Applications to a range of public good problems, including climate policy, are discussed. Our results highlight that it will generally be difficult to infer social preferences from observed behaviour.
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Robert Hahn
Director of Economics - Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford
Former Brookings Expert
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