The Volunteer’s Dilemma with Cost Synergies

Rabah Amir, Dominika Machowska, Jingwen Tian, Department of Economics, The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Institute of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics, University of Warsaw, Economics and Management School, Wuhan University

Journal of Conflict Resolution

Published online on October 17, 2025

Abstract

Journal of Conflict Resolution, Ahead of Print.
This paper revisits the well-known volunteer’s dilemma on the production of a public good when a single participant is sufficient for the task. We propose a cost-sharing model with a volunteering cost that decreases exponentially in the number of ...