Dominant assurance contracts
Kragen has been pretty excited about something called dominant assurance contracts. These are a structure for funding the creation of public goods (solving the "public goods problem"), which continues to be a thorny and important problem. I haven't been able to understand the math so far; there's apparently an argument indicating that dominant assurance contracts should be able to fund projects that other funding models can't, without necessarily relying on altruism.
In discussing this prospect, Kragen made the simple but important observation that pretty much everyone experiences both self-interested and altruistic motivations. That suggests that economists who ignore or disbelieve in altruism have an overly narrow view, whereas idealists who try to solve large problems by relying only on altruism may not succeed.
Kragen was so interested in this paper that he made dozens of hard copies and spread them around at several places where lots of people were gathered. The number of people I met or heard about over and over again this weekend reminds me what a small world it is. Maybe its smallness will help Kragen spread this idea around quickly, if it turns out to work well.
