Public goods Flashcards
How do you distinguish between a public and private good?
Depends on whether they are rivalrous and are excludable.
What is a rivalrous good?
When someone is using and benefitting from a good, it effects someone else’s use of the good.
What is an example of a rivalrous good?
A pen
What is excludability?
When there is a mechanism in place to prevent non payers from using and benefitting from the good.
What is a private good?
Rivalrous and excludable
What is a public good?
Non-rivalrous and non excludable
Are there any exceptions?
Yes, a park bench: non excludable and rivalrous.
Or a tv signal, non rivalrous but excludible
Why are public goods non excludable?
- You can’t tell who is benefitting from a good or by how much
- Its costly to have a mechanism to make people pay
- The MC of another person using the good is 0
What does the non excludability of public goods create?
The free riders problem.
What is the free rider problem?
People use things they’re not paying for.
How are public goods a market failure?
Because of the free rider problem, if public goods were left to the free market, firms would not produce them because their goal is to maximise profits. This leads to market failure.
What is the solution to the market failure of public goods?
The taxpayers pay for them (government intervention)
How should a public good be provided?
By the government with a voluntary agreement
What is a voluntary agreement?
Members of a community all chip in to pay for a public good.
It also can’t have too many free riders. So the people who pay for the good must cover the cost.
How does the government decide to provide a public good?
Using cost-benefit analysis (similar to marginal analysis)
Under what circumstances will the government provide a public good?
If MSB > MSC
How do you calculate marginal social cost?
Its just the price
How do you calculate the market demand curve?
Horizontal summation of individual demand curves at each price level
How do you calculate the MSB?
Vertical summation of MPB. Add up all of MPB at a certain quantity because MPB is willingness to pay.
What are the types of government spending?
Exhaustive expenditures
Transfer Payments
What are exhaustive expenditures?
Gov purchases of goods and services for consumption, making these goods and services no longer available for private use.
What are transfer payments?
A way of redistribution of income, transfers fund from one individual or organisation to another.
Do transfer payments change the amount of goods and services that are consumed by the government?
No