ABSTRACT

Many problems of collective action can be represented with the help of a simple model, where agents draw unequal benefits from the resource in proportion to their endowments in the relevant productive asset (fisheries, irrigation scheme, anti-erosive barriers, etc.). Consider a situation under which each agent decides the level of his own contribution to a common good. The common good is produced by aggregating the individual contributions, according to the following production function:

G=G(Σjgj)

where G represents the aggregate level of the common good, and gi represents the individual contribution of agent i.