Assortative Matching with Inequality in Voluntary Contribution Games

Content Provider	Scilit
Author	Duca, Stefano Helbing, Dirk Nax, Heinrich H.
Copyright Year	2016
Description	Journal: SSRN Electronic Journal Voluntary contribution games are a classic social dilemma in which the individually dominant strategies result in a poor performance of the population. However, the negative zero-contribution predictions from these types of social dilemma situations give way to more positive (near-)efficient ones when assortativity, instead of random mixing, governs the matching process in the population. Under assortative matching, agents contribute more than what would otherwise be strategically rational in order to be matched with others doing likewise. An open question has been the robustness of such predictions when heterogeneity in budgets amongst individuals is allowed. Here, we show analytically that the consequences of permitting heterogeneity depend crucially on the exact nature of the underlying public-good provision efficacy, but generally are rather devastating. Using computational methods, we quantify the loss resulting from heterogeneity vis-a-vis the homogeneous case as a function of (i) the public-good provision efficacy and (ii)the population inequality.
Related Links	https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/bitstream/20.500.11850/213665/2/Duca2017_Article_AssortativeMatchingWithInequal.pdf https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm?abstractid=3033125
ISSN	10914358
e-ISSN	15565068
DOI	10.2139/ssrn.3033125
Journal	SSRN Electronic Journal
Language	English
Publisher	Elsevier BV
Publisher Date	2016-09-06
Access Restriction	Open
Subject Keyword	Journal: SSRN Electronic Journal Assortative Matching Computational Economics
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health Psychiatry and Mental Health