Social Insurance with In-kind Provision of Private Goods

This paper addresses the desirability of providing in-kind transfers as a screening device to facilitate redistribution of income from able to disabled persons within a social insurance system. An optimal policy—consisting of cash transfers, income-contingent in-kind transfers of one good particularly demanded by disabled workers, and linear taxation of other commodities—is characterized. It is then asked whether and, if so, when this policy can be replaced by an "earning-tested scheme" that provides the in-kind good only to those indivi duals who have no earnings from labor or by a non-linear pricing policy.     

Public Versus Private Provision of Public Goods

It is well known that public goods are underprovided in a static setting with voluntary contributions. Public provision—in a median voter framework with proportional taxation—generally exceeds private provision. This paper compares private and public provision of public goods in a dynamic setting. In a dynamic setting, voluntary donations can result in efficient provision. Also, majority‐rule solutions exist even when taxes are not proportional to income. At low discount factors, public provision tends to exceed private provision. As patience increases, however, private provision may exceed public provision. This occurs because many outcomes with a low level of public good provision—and potentially large targeted transfer payments to particular individuals—become sustainable under public provision. Under private provision, however, large targeted transfers are unsustainable. To finance the public good, private provision tends to result in benefit taxation, and public provision tends to result in progressive taxation.     

Factor Endowments and the Private Provision of Public Goods

The paper examines the consequences of increasing the size of the community in the standard model of the private provision of public goods when costs are variable. In contrast to an economy with fixed costs, the provision of the public good can fall with a larger community, and an increased provision of the public good is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for individual utility to rise. The paper also contributes to the literature on immiserizing growth in that it shows that capital accumulation can possibly result in lower utility for all individuals.     

Social Norms and Private Provision of Public Goods

The formation of social norms for voluntary contributions to a public good is analyzed in a game in which people have preferences for private consumption, a public good, and social approval. Each person chooses to be one of the two types: a contributor or a non‐contributor. Thereafter, each person meets people who can observe his type. A non‐contributor feels disapproval, whereas a contributor feels approval if he believes that a contributor observes his type. The game has two asymptotically stable states: one in which everybody is a contributor, and one in which nobody is a contributor. Governmental subsidization of the public good can move the society to the former state, whereas a governmental contribution to the public good can move the society to the latter. Indeed, this crowding in or crowding out prevails even after policy reversal.     

The Distributional Impact of Public Goods Provision: A Veil of Ignorance Approach

The "veil of ignorance" approach is used to consider the redistribution implied by different tax-benefit systems. Assuming a (hypothetical) ex-ante situation in which individuals lack any knowledge about their future income, redistribution from rich to poor can be seen as a form of insurance. Taking redistribution and insurance as synonymous, the analysis derives cases of redistributionally neutral systems of taxation and public good provision.
JEL classification : H 23; D 30;, H 41     

公共品私人自愿提供决策的实验研究

本文利用实验数据对公共品私人自愿提供机制的多个经典特征事实进行了实证检验,其结论基本支持诸如"公共品私人自愿供给的存在性"、"捐献率随重复捐献次数的增加而有下降的趋势"和"公共品投资的私人边际回报率和交流的正效应"等特征事实.同时,实验还得到了一些新的发现,如"期初平均捐献水平较低"、"口头协议效果显著"、"经验分享存在积极作用"和"小组的合作程度存在巨大的差异"等.这些结论说明通过合理的制度设计和安排可以达到部分公共品由私人自愿提供的目的.     

On the Private Provision of Two or More Public Goods

We extend the simple model of voluntary public good provision to allow for two or more public goods, and explore the new possibilities that arise in this setting. We show that, when there are many public goods, voluntary contribution equilibrium typically generates, not only too low a level of public good provision, but also the wrong mix of public goods. We also analyze the neutrality property in the more general setting, and extend a neutrality proposition of Bergstrom, Blume, and Varian (1986) .     

Income Distribution, Taxation, and the Private Provision of Public Goods

This article investigates the role of taxation when public goods are privately provided. Externalities between consumers via the public good are shown to cause kinks in social indifference curves. As a result, a government restricted to income taxation should engineer enough inequality to ensure there are some non-contributors to the public good. Whether commodity taxation changes this conclusion depends on the extent to which consumers "see through" the government budget constraint. If they can, inequality should still be sought. When they cannot, in contrast to the case of an economy with only private goods, commodity taxation can be used in conjunction with income transfers to achieve the first-best.     

On the Private Provision of Intertemporal Public Goods with Stock Effects

The provision of public goods is often hindered by a lack of powerful institutions that can sanction free riders or otherwise enforce private contributions to the public good. The simple deposit based solution introduced by Gerber and Wichardt (J Public Econ 93:429–439, 2009) solves this problem, but may require prohibitively large deposits, in particular in the context of intertemporal public goods. In this paper, we propose a modification of the deposit solution that relies only on comparably small deposits. The proposed modification improves the applicability of the procedure, most notably as it also allows to reduce deposits in static public goods problem by transforming them into dynamic ones with small per period contributions.     

Subsidies versus Public Provision of Private Goods as Instruments for Redistribution

The literatures on differential commodity taxes and on quantity controls to supplement income taxation have developed separately. This paper combines these two strands in the standard framework of optimal non-linear income taxation. We use a model with two types of households where the government has access to both subsidy policy and public provision of a good substitutable for leisure, and ouseholds can supplement the publicity provided good from the market. We present conditions under which policy should involve one or both of these two instruments alongside income taxation. The model is extended to many ability types.     

The Private Provision of Public Goods under Uncertainty: A Symmetric-Equilibrium Approach

Various studies have examined whether increased uncertainty about the non‐Nash response of others to an individual's voluntary contribution to a public good affects that individual's contribution so as to mitigate the free‐rider problem. We extend this single‐agent approach to the analysis of a symmetric equilibrium. We provide conditions on group size and endogenous relative risk aversion that imply increased equilibrium contributions in response to greater uncertainty about the productivity of each individual's contribution to the actual level of the public good. These results enable us to broaden the circumstances in which the theory predicts that increased uncertainty reduces free riding.     

采矿业繁荣与公共品提供

资源型地区的财政收入高度依赖于采矿业,地方政府对财政资金的有效利用是提升居民福利水平和促进经济社会发展的必要条件.本文从财政收入获取形式影响地方政府行为激励的角度,分析了采矿业繁荣恶化地方公共品提供的机制.然后,文章基于1998-2018年中国地级市层面数据,利用国际矿产资源价格变动作为外生冲击,对采矿业繁荣影响地方公共品提供进行实证检验.结果 表明,采矿业繁荣尽管大幅度增加了地方财政收入,但是教育、医疗等民生性公共品供给水平并未因此而提升,基础设施等生产性公共品供给也未因此而改善.进一步研究发现,采矿业繁荣期,财政供养人员数量显著膨胀、财政资金使用效率降低,因而高速增长的财政收入并未有效转化为公共品供给.本文的结论表明,应该强化资源型地区财政资金使用的监督约束机制,提高财政资金使用效率.     

Heterogeneity and the Voluntary Provision of Public Goods

We investigate the effects of heterogeneity and incomplete information on aggregate contributions to a public good using the voluntary contribution mechanism. The non-linear laboratory environment has three-person groups as partners under varying conditions of information and communication. Bergstrom, Blum and Varian predict that increasing heterogeneity will have no effect on aggregate contributions in a no-communication environment. Ledyard conjectures a positive effect of incomplete information, a negative effect of heterogeneity, and a positive interaction of heterogeneity and incomplete information. We find that incomplete information has a small but significant negative effect. Heterogeneity has a positive effect on aggregate contributions, but its effects interact unexpectedly with communication. In a no-communication environment, heterogeneity in two dimensions (endowment and preferences) increases contributions substantially while heterogeneity in a single dimension (endowment or preferences) has little effect. In the communication environment we find the reverse. We also find a positive interaction between heterogeneity and incomplete information. Thus we reject the Bergstrom, Blume and Varian invariance result and provide mixed evidence on Ledyard's conjectures.     

Voluntary Provision of Public Goods and Technology

This paper highlights issues in the theory of voluntary provision of public goods, building on the investigation by Peacock in connection with the contributions by Coase and Buchanan. Our goal is twofold. We first draw attention to the early literature investigating the provision of public goods and to the successive theoretical analysis. We then focus on the impact of technology on supply and demand. Examples of different types of public goods are provided, with special attention to the cultural sector, to investigate whether and how technology affects the efficiency and the effectiveness of the related public goods provision. The implementation and exploitation of technological advancements are investigated in view of the role of different actors (public, private) at different levels of government.     

Public Provision of Private Goods,Self‐Selection,and Income Tax Avoidance

Redistributive taxation should benefit those with low earnings capacity rather than those who choose a lower income to obtain tax savings. Several contributions have highlighted how public provision of work complements can discourage people from lowering labor supply to diminish taxable income. We show how tax avoidance, previously neglected, can alter the conclusions regarding public provision. Tax avoidance breaks the link between labor supply and reported income. An agent reducing his reported income to escape taxes might no longer forego a publicly provided labor complement, because he can now lower his income by avoiding more rather than working less.     

区位性因素与公共品的最优供给

本文分析了两种区位性因素对地方公共品最优供给(质量与数量)的影响。一类区位性因素为某公共品在城市中所在的区域。分析表明,位于城市边缘地区的公共品的最优质量要小于位于城市中心地区公共品的最优质量。另一类区位性因素为某公共品与居民的相对位置(距离),这一因素在具体分析中被转化为使用居民出行半径表示的指标。结论表明,出行半径的增加一方面加大了中间投票人与公共品之间的距离,另一方面也使得原先距离公共品较远的居民得以有机会享用该公共品。前一种影响对公共品的最优质量起抑制作用,后一种影响的效果则相反。而公共品的最优质量随出行半径如何变化,将取决于这两种效应之间的比较。本文还根据公共品之间是否存在替代性区分了替代性公共品与非替代性公共品,并分析了这两种不同性质的公共品受区位性因素影响而在最优质量与最优供给数量上所呈现出的差异。     

Nature of transfers,income tax function and empirical estimation of elasticity of taxable income for Brazil

This article aims to estimate the elasticity of taxable income (ETI), taking into account the nature of transfers and their use as a redistribution package (involving cash and in-kind transfers) to households in Brazil. Our contributions are twofold. First, we provide a simple model with balanced-budget government that reveals the role played by cash and in-kind transfers on the labour supply (and income tax revenues thereof). Next, in order to estimate ETI in the presence of cash and in-kind transfers, Brazilian population surveys (Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios [PNAD]) are used to explore a limited tax reform that was implemented between 1997 and 1998. This reform only affected the higher income tax bracket. Our findings suggest that in-kind (cash) transfers are positively (negatively) associated with reported taxable income and precise estimation of ETI requires estimates of both types of transfers. Last, we estimate the ETI for Brazil in the range from 0.4 to 1.3 not different from those that maximize income tax revenues.     

The Asymptotic Voluntary Provision of the Pure Public Goods

This paper analyzes the voluntary provision of the pure public good in a sequence of finite economies. The boundedness of this provision is established under very weak conditions. The Cournot–Nash provision of the public good is bounded. In contrast, the Lindahl provision is unbounded but the proportion of private good devoted to its production may be infinitesimal. Several examples are provided to relate this paper to the literature.     

Heterogeneity, Coordination and the Provision of Best-Shot Public Goods

In a best-shot public good, where the provision level is determined by the highest contribution instead of the sum of all contributions, there is potential for waste and underprovision due to coordination failure. These failures are exacerbated when agents are identical because there is no focal point to guide coordination. In most real-world best-shot public-good situations, however, heterogeneity exists in the ability to contribute and the benefits received from the good. With such differences, shared expectations might emerge to improve coordination and increase efficiency. Using laboratory experiments, we find significant behavioral responses to heterogeneity that improve efficiency, but not always from increased coordination.     

Politically Determined Income Inequality and the Provision of Public Goods

Political processes may bring about Pareto improvements by increasing income inequality in a society that produces a public good by voluntary contributions. Proportional taxation funds a “governing agent.” The most endowed agent is the Condorcet winner for governing agent. When the tax rate can also be chosen by a vote, the ideal point of the agent with median initial endowment is the Condorcet winner under Cobb–Douglas utility. If Pareto improvements are possible, this ideal point corresponds to Pareto improvement. Pareto improvement may also be possible, even when a Leviathan set taxes, if there is deadweight loss from taxation. Pareto improvements are indeed always possible in “large” societies. On the other hand, no improvements may be possible if the initial distribution of wealth is very unequal in a “small” society, and Condorcet winners may not exist for other utility functions.