We consider a game-theoretic model where individuals compete over a shared failure-prone system or resource. We investigate the effectiveness of a taxation mechanism in controlling the utilization of the resource at the Nash equilibrium when the decision-makers have behavioral risk preferences, captured by prospect theory. We first observe that heterogeneous prospect-theoretic risk preferences can lead to counter-intuitive outcomes. In particular, for resources that exhibit network effects, utilization can increase under taxation and there may not exist a tax rate that achieves the socially optimal level of utilization. We identify conditions under which utilization is monotone and continuous, and then characterize the range of utilizations that can be achieved by a suitable choice of tax rate. We further show that resource utilization is higher when players are charged differentiated tax rates compared to the case when all players are charged an identical tax rate, under suitable assumptions.

中文翻译：

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通过税收控制容易出现故障的系统的人工使用

我们考虑一种博弈论模型，其中个人在共享易发生故障的系统或资源上进行竞争。我们调查了当决策者有行为风险偏好时，税收机制在控制纳什均衡资源利用方面的有效性，由前景理论捕获。我们首先观察到异质前景理论风险偏好会导致违反直觉的结果。特别是，对于表现出网络效应的资源，在征税的情况下，利用率会增加，并且可能不存在达到社会最优利用率的税率。我们识别利用单调和连续的利用的条件，然后表征通过合适选择税率可以实现的利用范围。