Bargaining over Public Goods

Abstract

In a simple public good economy, we propose a natural bar- gaining procedure, the equilibria of which converge to Lin- dahl allocations as the cost of bargaining vanishes. The pro- cedure splits the decision over the allocation in a decision about personalized prices and a decision about output levels for the public good. Since this procedure does not assume price-taking behavior, it provides a strategic foundation for the personalized taxes inherent in the Lindahl solution to the public goods problem.public goods; alternating offers bargaining