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Contribution Details

Type Journal Article
Scope Discipline-based scholarship
Title Using Neural Measures of Economic Value to Solve the Public Goods Free-Rider Problem
Organization Unit
Authors
  • Antonio Rangel
  • Ian Michael Krajbich
  • Colin Camerer
  • J O Ledyard
Item Subtype Original Work
Refereed Yes
Status Published in final form
Language
  • English
Journal Title Science
Publisher Highwire Press
Geographical Reach international
ISSN 0036-8075
Volume 326
Number 5952
Page Range 596 - 599
Date 2009
Date Annual Report 2011
Abstract Text Every social group needs to decide when to provide public goods and how to allocate the costs among its members. Ideally, this decision would maximize the group’s net benefits while also ensuring that every individual’s benefit is greater than the cost he or she has to pay. Unfortunately, the economic theory of mechanism design has shown that this ideal solution is not feasible when the group leadership does not know the values of the individual group members for the public good. We show that this impossibility result can be overcome in laboratory settings by combining technologies for obtaining neural measures of value (functional magnetic resonance imaging–based pattern classification) with carefully designed institutions that allocate costs based on both reported and neurally measured values.
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