[extropy-chat] Externalities

[Robin Hanson]

At 08:32 PM 7/17/2005, Mike Linksvayer wrote:
>http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/research/math/papers/144.pdf
>...
>Anyone know of a readable summary of how this (which I've probably
>horribly misunderstood) would work in practice and of subsequent
>research?

Here is some favorable experimental data:

Learning and Incentive Compatible Mechanisms for Public Goods 
Provision: An Experimental Study, Yan Chen and Fang-Fang Tang. 
Journal of Political Economy 106 (1998): 633-662.

Little or no work has been done on working out practical applications.
While lots of work has been done on theory and lab experiments of related
mechanisms, it has been limited to abstractly described situations, avoiding
the messy complexity of real politics.  In other areas where lots of
consulting money was available, such as in auction design, economists have
gotten into the messy details.  But few consulting customers have been
interested in making public good mechanisms real.



Robin Hanson  rhanson at gmu.edu  http://hanson.gmu.edu
Associate Professor of Economics, George Mason University
MSN 1D3, Carow Hall, Fairfax VA 22030-4444
703-993-2326  FAX: 703-993-2323