Pro-Rich and Progressive: Policy Selection and Contributions in Threshold Public Goods Experiments

Experiments with multiple threshold public goods provide insight into how groups overcome coordination issues to collectively select and fund one option from a set of alternatives. We investigate how funding, selection, and success of public goods are impacted by endowment and preference heterogeneity. Groups tend to focus on and successfully fund the option that is preferred by the wealthiest group member, demonstrating a wealthy-interest policy bias even in the absence of corruption, politics, and information asymmetries. At the same time, we demonstrate how groups converge to divide costs in highly progressive ways, with differences in voluntary contributions mostly offsetting differences in endowments or benefits received. We discuss implications for policy selection, charitable giving, and public finance.