Efficient mechanisms for a partially public good. (Q1862737)

The paper deals with the problem of designing a mechanism to allocate efficiently a partially public good when each buyer (the seller) privately observes her own valuation (production cost) for the object. The good is partially public in the following sense: if buyer \(i\) receives the item, then her gross surplus increases and also the gross surplus of any other buyer \(j \neq i\) rises, but the latter increase is less than if buyer \(j\) obtained the good. A probability model is considered. Sufficient conditions ensuring the existence of an efficient mechanism for any probability distribution are obtained.