Public Goods in Endogenous Networks

In this paper we study a local public good game in an endogenous network with heterogeneous agents. We consider two specifications, in which different networks arise. When agents differ in the cost of acquiring the public good, active agents form hierarchical complete multipartite graphs; yet, better types need not have more neighbors. When agents have heterogeneous benefits from the public good, nested split graphs in which investment need not be monotonic in type emerge. In large societies, few agents are active and the network dampens inequality.