We study contracting between a public good provider and users with private valuations of the good. We show that, once the provider extracts the users' private information, she benefits from manipulating the collective information received from all users when communicating with them. We derive conditions under which such manipulation determines the direction of distortions in public good provision. If the provider is non-manipulative, the public good is always underprovided, whereas overprovision occurs with a manipulative provider. With overprovision, not only high-valuation users, but also low-valuation users may obtain positive rents—users may prefer facing a manipulative provider.

中文翻译：

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操纵性提供者过度提供公共物品

我们研究了公共物品提供者和用户之间的合同，他们对物品进行了私人估价。我们表明，一旦提供者提取用户的私人信息，她就可以在与所有用户通信时操纵从所有用户那里收到的集体信息。我们推导出这种操纵决定公共物品供给扭曲方向的条件。如果提供者是非操纵性的，则公共物品总是供应不足，而操纵性提供者则会出现过度供应。通过超额配置，不仅高估值用户，低估值用户也可以获得正租金——用户可能更愿意面对操纵性的提供者。