Threshold Public Goods

只有在为生产提供最低限度的支持（临界量）时才能生产的公共产品被称为“临界公共产品”。如果自愿支持者只能提供固定数量的资源或什么都不提供，我们称之为二元阈值公共产品（BTPG）。例如-参与公共假日、社会项目、罢工-批准带有固定减排承诺的京都议定书-支持议会或业主大会的提案-签署公共请求“贡献”可能伴随着积极或消极的（机会）成本。这些成本可以是心理成本，例如，如果一名议员投票反对他自己的信条，因为支持他的政党可以促进他的职业生涯，或者成本可以包括时间和金钱，例如，参加一个关于自己孩子的学校项目。当然，BTPG的生产是由一个预先播放阶段，其中公共利益是指定和讨论的手段和目的。这一阶段将被评论，但它不是理论和实验研究的一部分。在我们的项目中，我们希望获得基于一个相当普遍的模型的理论见解。我们的实验研究的假设应该以理论为指导。关于我们延长原项目的请求：我们的主要目标没有改变。我们希望完成我们的结果，并测试一个我们在最初申请时不知道的理论陈述。理论：BTPG有过多的均衡。对于启发式/似是而非以及系统的均衡选择，这些均衡的属性是至关重要的。需要进一步调查。理论/行为：从理论上讲，同时投票和顺序投票的效率是完全不同的。在项目结束之前，我们将完成同步投票的实验，在扩展阶段，我们希望进行顺序投票的实验。我们有来自性格测试和情绪诱发的未使用的数据。这些数据的使用不仅需要广泛讨论其意义和与决策的联系，还需要讨论统计方法。(In我们之前的项目“权力与责任”，这些数据的使用与其他见解和出版物有关。

Public goods which are produced only if a minimum amount of support (critical mass) is provided for its production are called "threshold public goods". If the voluntary supporters can provide only nothing or a fixed amount of their resource, we call these goods Binary Threshold Public Goods (BTPGs). Examples are the - Participation in common holidays, social projects, strikes- Ratification of the Kyoto protocol with fixed reduction commitments- Support of proposals in parliaments or owner assemblies- Signing a public request"Contributing" can be accompanied by positive or negative (opportunity) costs. These can be psychic costs, for example if a member of parliament votes against his own credo, because supporting his party promotes his career, or costs can consist of time and money as, for example, participating in a school project concerning one’s children. Of course, the production of the BTPG is preceeded by a pre-play phase where the public good is specified and discussed with respect to means and ends. This phase will be commented but it is not part of the theoretical and experimental investigations.In our project, we want to gain theoretical insights based on a rather general model. Hypotheses for our experimental investigations should be guided by theory.Concerning our request for extension of the original project:Our main goals have not changed. We want to complete our results and test a theoretical statement which we did not know at the time of the original application.- Theory: BTPGs have a plethora of equilibria. For heuristic/plausible as well as for systematic equilibrium selection the attributes of these equilibria are crucial. Further investigations are necessary.- Theory/behavior: Theoretically, the efficiency of simultaneous and sequential voting is completely different. Until the end of the project we will have completed experiments with simultaneous voting, in the extension phase we want to conduct experiments with sequential voting.- We have unused data from personality tests and elicitations of emotions. The usage of these data requires extensive discussions not only about meaning and connection with decisions, but also about statistical methods. (In our previous project "Power and Responsibility" the usage of these data was connected with additional insights and publications.)