Abstract

We consider a dynamic contribution game in which a group of agents collaborate to complete a public project. The agents exert efforts over time and get rewarded upon completion of the project, once the cumulative effort reaches a pre-specified level. The cost of effort is linear. We explicitly derive the cooperative solution and a noncooperative Markov-perfect Nash equilibrium. We characterize the set of socially efficient projects, i.e., projects that cooperative groups find worth completing. Comparing with the Markov-perfect Nash equilibrium, we find that non-cooperative groups give up large socially efficient projects and take too much time to complete the others.