Learning and incentive‐Compatible Mechanisms for Public Goods Provision: An Experimental Study

Abstract

This is the first systematic experimental study of the comparative performance of two incentive‐compatible mechanisms for public goods provision: the basic quadratic mechanism by Groves and Ledyard and the paired‐difference mechanism by Walker. Our experiments demonstrate that the performance of the basic quadratic mechanism under a high punishment parameter is far better than that of the same mechanism under a low punishment parameter, which, in turn, is better than that of the paired‐difference mechanism. We estimate three individual behavioral models: an exponentialized relative payoff sum model outperforms the generalized fictitious play model. We also provide a sufficient condition for convergence under the basic quadratic mechanism.