Experimental Examination of the Compensation Mechanism

本项目继续进行有关制度的实验性研究，这些制度可能为谈判解决诸如全球变暖、污染控制和共同资源等外部性问题提供适当的框架。这些制度被称为补偿机制，对经济学家感兴趣的大多数外部性问题产生了有效的结果。它们还具有吸引人的分配特征，因为它们产生的分配是外部性以边际成本定价的竞争均衡。本项目对两方单边外部性、公共产品、一般外部性结构、公地问题和拥堵问题的不同补偿机制的表现进行了实验研究。实验是在有充分信息和没有充分信息的情况下进行的。该项目还为NeXT工作站开发并传播了一个计算机环境，该环境捕获了所有外部性问题的逻辑结构。因此，同样的计算机程序可以用于所有关于外部性的实验工作——只有用户界面和回报结构会发生变化。

This project continues experimental research on institutions that may offer an appropriate framework for negotiating solutions to externality problems such as global warming, pollution control, and common resources. The institutions, known as compensation mechanisms, yield efficient outcomes for most externalities problems of interest to economists. They also have attractive distributional characteristics in that they yield allocations that are competitive equilibria with the externalities priced at marginal cost. This project investigates experimentally the performance of different compensation mechanisms for two-party unilateral externalities, public goods, general externalities structures, commons problems, and congestion problems. The experiments are run both with and without full information. The project also develops and disseminates a computer environment for NeXT workstations that captures the logical structure for all externalities problems. As a consequence the same computer program can be used for all experimental work on externalities - just the user interface and the payoff structure will change.