The foreign assistance policies of major donor nations, the United NationsDevelopment Programme, and the World Bank have recently been redefined to explicitly address the provision of international public goods (IPGs). Examples of IPGs include peacekeeping, financial market stability, and biodiversity. Given the global heterogeneity across nations, it is therefore curious to find that most studies on which these redefinitions are based assume symmetric costs in the provision of IPGs. Within an evolutionary framework, the author analyzes the prospects for the voluntary provision of IPGs when the benefit/cost ratio varies across nations and characterizes the results for summation, weakest link, weaker link, best-shot, and better shot IPGs. The author demonstrates that a leading- by-example strategy by the country with the highest benefit/cost ratio can implement the cooperative outcome.
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