if A and B both like X (and have the same desired funding level for it), but have different second choices of Y and Z, the fully cooperative solution would not involve either A or B funding X alone.
I’m not sure this is right. What if A and B both commit to fully funding their top charities, as soon as they find such opportunities (i.e., without taking other people’s reactions into consideration)? That seems like a fully cooperative solution that on expectation would work as well as A and B trying to negotiate a “fair division” of funding for X. Also, I’m not sure this analogy applies to the situation where A is a single big donor and B is a bunch of small donors, since in that case A and B can’t actually negotiate so A unilaterally deciding on a split would seem to lead to some deadweight loss (e.g., missed funding opportunities).
BTW, are you aware of a fully thought-out analysis of Good Venture’s “splitting” policy (whether such a policy is a good idea, and what the optimal split is)? For such an important question, I’m surprised how little apparent deliberation and empirical investigation has been done on it. Even if the value of information here is just 1% of the total funding, that would amount to about $100,000,000. (Not to mention that the analysis could be applied to other analogous situations with large and small donors.)
I’m not sure this is right. What if A and B both commit to fully funding their top charities, as soon as they find such opportunities (i.e., without taking other people’s reactions into consideration)? That seems like a fully cooperative solution that on expectation would work as well as A and B trying to negotiate a “fair division” of funding for X. Also, I’m not sure this analogy applies to the situation where A is a single big donor and B is a bunch of small donors, since in that case A and B can’t actually negotiate so A unilaterally deciding on a split would seem to lead to some deadweight loss (e.g., missed funding opportunities).
BTW, are you aware of a fully thought-out analysis of Good Venture’s “splitting” policy (whether such a policy is a good idea, and what the optimal split is)? For such an important question, I’m surprised how little apparent deliberation and empirical investigation has been done on it. Even if the value of information here is just 1% of the total funding, that would amount to about $100,000,000. (Not to mention that the analysis could be applied to other analogous situations with large and small donors.)