Stackelberg leadership and transfers in private provision of public goods

We consider transfers in a Stackelberg game of private provision of a public good. It turns out that the agent who is the follower in the process of making voluntary contributions to a public good may have an incentive to make monetary transfers to the Stackelberg leader even in a situation where neither has a comparative advantage in making contributions to the public good. The Stackelberg leader is willing to accept such transfers if the actual contribution game is fully non-cooperative because the transfer generates a Pareto superior outcome. If the contributions in the Stackelberg equilibrium is the threat point of a possible cooperative Nash bargaining game, the Stackelberg leader will refuse to accept the transfer if she can. Received: 30 June 1995 / Accepted: 18 February 1997     

The effect of spillovers on the provision of local public goods

This paper analyzes the provision of local public goods with positive spillovers across jurisdictions. If spillovers are symmetric, the non-cooperative game played by jurisdictions admits a unique equilibrium, and an increase in spillovers reduces the total provision of public goods. Smaller jurisdictions always reduce their contribution, but larger jurisdictions can increase their contribution. When spillovers are asymmetric, equilibrium is unique if spillovers are low, while multiple equilibria exist for high spillover values. In the case of two jurisdictions, an increase in the flow of spillovers to one jurisdiction benefits agents from that jurisdiction but harms agents in the other jurisdiction. Beyond the case of two jurisdictions, the effect of changes in spillovers cannot be signed. An increase in the spillovers flowing to a jurisdiction can actually result in an increase in the supply of public goods by that jurisdiction and harm agents residing in it, while benefiting agents in the other jurisdictions. The results of the paper reveal the complexity of interactions that will plague the design of institutions for multijurisdictional local public good economies with spillovers.      

Effects of an anticipated expansion in international public goods on public capital accumulation

This paper presents a generic model to include public capital accumulation and the services of international public goods provided by a neighbor country. It examines the long-run and short-run responses of private and public capital accumulation in the home country to an anticipated increase in international public goods. It is found that the home economy in effect cuts its public capital stock, but keeps an unchanged private capital stock in the long run when a neighbor commits itself to expanding the stock of public goods in the future. The key factor determining the short-run responses of the home country is the extent to which it will match its government spending with a neighbor country's policy, which is associated with the relative difference between the marginal utility of consumption and that of home public capital affected by an increase in international public goods.     

城市公共品供给中各级政府事权与财权的划分

政府在城市公共品供给中需要考虑如何合理划分各级政府的事权与财权.城市公共品的特性是各级政府事权划分的基础,而事权与财权相统一的原则是各级政府财权划分的理论依据.通过对我国城市公共品供给中各级政府间财政关系进行实证研究发现,各级政府在事权划分上存在模糊、重复、越位和缺位的情况,而财权的划分则没有能够实现与相应事权的匹配.因此,需要重新界定各级政府的事权与财权,从而完善政府的城市公共品供给职能.     

Trading equilibrium in a public good economy with smooth preferences and a mixed measure space of consumers

Lindahl and Nash equilibria are often used in the theory of public good. Shitovitz and Spiegel (1998) present an example of 2-person economy with one private good and one pure public good, where the core efficient Lindahl allocation does not Pareto dominate the (inefficient) Nash allocation. In this paper we introduce the new concept of Trading equilibrium for a general public good economy with smooth preferences and a mixed measure space of consumers. We obtain that this economy admits a unique Trading equilibrium. Moreover, the Trading equilibrium induces a core allocation that strictly Pareto dominates the Nash allocation.     

区域经济合作推动公共产品供给的机理及对策

市场经济存在着市场失灵,因此需要政府提供公共产品,同时,由于存在着区域间发展不均衡和地方利益保护,公共产品的供给也存在着严重的不均衡,反过来限制了区域经济一体化的发展和进程。文章研究根据区域经济一体化理论,提出了构建区域经济一体化推动的横向公共产品供给模式,以此更好地推动区域经济合作的思路。     

Efficient inequality: differential allocation in the local public sector

This paper examines the consequences for social efficiency if the locally provided public input can be differentially allocated among residents. We derive the distributional efficiency condition, which is the distribution of public inputs that maximizes within-city gains from trade. Differential allocation also causes modifications to the standard (Samuelsonian) allocative efficiency condition. Additionally, we explore the consequences of differential allocation for the median voter model. Standard empirical voter models are seriously flawed because they fail to distinguish final public output production from either individual demand or the distribution of publicly provided inputs. Finally, we derive the club sharing efficiency condition.     

Taxation in an economy with private provision of public goods

This paper analyses the effects of taxation and subsidies in an economy with private provision of a public good. It is shown that in a situation where all individuals contribute, taxation affects the equilibrium allocation if and only if at least one individual's voluntary contribution to the public good has an impact on the aggregate tax payments of the others. We then consider linear nonneutral tax-subsidy schemes and analyse efficiency and uniqueness of the resulting Nash equilibria. We show that an efficient Nash equilibrium, where all individuals contribute, will in general not be unique, and establish a non-uniformity property which a tax-subsidy scheme must fulfil in order to induce a unique interior equilibrium that is efficient. Throughout the paper it is assumed that individuals fully understand and take into account the government's budget constraint. Received: 3 November 1997 / Accepted: 23 March 1999     

A decentralized and informationally efficient mechanism realizing fair outcomes in economies with public goods

We present a decentralized mechanism (called Lindahl Egalitarian), which yields Pareto efficient and envy free allocations (i.e. fair outcomes). We show that the mechanism is informationally efficient in general production economies with an arbitrary, but finite, number of private and public goods, and a finite number of agents. The mechanism reduces to the Walrasian mechanism starting from equal wealth when no agent cares about public goods. We also prove that the set of Public Competitive equilibrium allocations (from equal endowments and proportional taxation), and the set of the Lindahl Egalitarian equilibrium allocations are the same. We are grateful to Xavier Calsamiglia and Albert Marcet for helpful conversations, and to A. de la Fuente, I. Macho, and an anonimous referee for useful suggestions. A. Manresa’s research has been supported by the grant CICYT PB90-0172. J. Aizpurua acknowledges financial support from the Government of Navarra.     

Pareto improving interventions in a general equilibrium model with private provision of public goods

Most of the literature on government intervention in models of voluntary public goods supply focuses on interventions that increase the total level of a public good, which is considered to be typically underprovided. However, an intervention that is successful in increasing the public good level need not benefit everyone. In this paper we take a direct approach to welfare properties of voluntary provision equilibria in a full blown general equilibrium model with public goods and study interventions that have the goal of Pareto improving on the voluntary provision outcome. Towards this end, we study a model with many private goods and non-linear production technology for the public good, and hence allow for relative price effects to serve as a powerful channel of intervention. In this setup we show that Pareto improving interventions generally do exist. In particular, direct government provision financed by “small” , or “local” , lump-sum taxes can be used generically to Pareto improve upon the voluntary provision outcome.     

Dynamic voluntary provision of public goods with uncertainty: a stochastic differential game model

Fershtman and Nitzan (Eur. Econ. Rev. 35:1057–1067, 1991) presented a continuous dynamic public good game and solved the model for feedback Nash equilibria. Wirl (Eur. J. Polit. Econ. 12:555–560, 1996) extended the model and considered nonlinear strategies. Both models do not include uncertainty and hence neglect an important factor in the theory of public goods. We extend the framework of Nitzan and Fershtman and include a diffusion term. We consider two cases. In the first case, the volatility of the diffusion term is dependent on the current level of the public good. This set-up will in principle lead to the same type of feedback strategies computed under certainty. In the second case, the volatility is dependent on the current rate of public good provision by the agents. The results are qualitatively different. We provide a detailed discussion as well as numerical examples. In particular, we show that in both cases uncertainty signifies the free rider effect.     

Price and quantity competition among heterogeneous suppliers with two-part pricing: applications to clubs, local public goods, networks, and growth controls

Models of club goods, local public goods, and growth controls appear to have theoretical structures distinct from usual oligopoly models. This article shows, however, that they are special cases of a generalized oligopoly model that incorporates the possibility of two-part pricing and externalities between consumers (either congestion or network externalities). Our generalized two-part pricing model not only serves as a synthesis of a wide range of models but also allows us to obtain several new results on equilibrium prices. Another advantage of our model is that it can be interpreted as a reduced form of more complicated models that have spatial structures. This facilitates extension to the case where firms are heterogeneous and the number of firms is arbitrary.     

On the Edgeworth conjecture for production economies with public goods: A contract-based approach

The paper applies and elaborates a contractual approach to study economies with a production of public goods. The barter contractual approach was developed in  and  for exchange economies; it is now modified and extended to the production economy. This includes hereby the introduction of a production contract and the adoption of known earlier notions: a web of contracts, coalitional domination for webs, a partial breaking of contracts, and so on. Thus specific notions of properly contractual and fuzzy contractual allocations for an economy with public goods are introduced and their equivalence with Lindahl equilibria is stated. These theorems can be interpreted as a new way of perfect competition presentation.     

城市公共产品供给决策中的公众参与

实现城市公共产品的有效供给,为城市发展提供良好的基础条件,是提升城市综合发展能力的关键所在。由于缺乏系统完善的公众参与机制,在城市公共产品供给决策领域,存在着公众参与层次较低、公众参与失灵等问题。城市公共产品供给决策中公众参与的作用能否得到实现,离不开公众参与子机制作用的有效发挥。实现城市公共产品供给决策过程和实现过程与公众参与的系统整合,以此构建城市公共产品供给决策中公众参与机制的运作模型。     

公租房小区的特征及治理

公租房小区有三个特征:一是租房者和买房者的混居;二是政府在公租房小区有着相当比重的经济利益;三是居民都是社会的收入中下阶层。公租房小区要避免变成贫民窟,其关键之一是中下阶层的居民能够也愿意参与到小区的治理中来。在此基础上,公租房小区的治理应该强调以小区居民代表为主体组成小区管理委员会,居民代表由居民大会选举产生,买房者的投票权高于租房者,政府代表拥有一定比例的投票权。     

城市准公共物品市场化运作的困境分析——以城市污水治理为例

我国许多城市已进行了准公共物品市场化运作的改革,以城市污水治理为例,指出我国城市准公共物品市场化运作中存在的问题,从城市准公共物品市场化运作的前提条件、城市准公共物品的定价和市场化运作的环境方面探讨了"市场失灵"的原因,并得出相应的结论和对策。     

Equilibrium allocations of endowment-pretension games in public good economies

In a public good economy where agents' preferences are known but endowments are private information, instituting an allocation rule and asking the agents their initial endowments induces an endowment-pretension game. We analyse the Nash equilibrium allocations of this game and discuss its welfare properties with reference to voluntary contributions allocations. Received: 30 May 2001, Accepted: 23 September 2005 JEL Classification: H41 I am grateful to Murat Sertel for his continuous support and encouragement; to G?ksel Asan and Arunava Sen for their invaluable help. I would also like to thank Fikret Adaman, Ahmet Alkan, Salvador Barberá, Semih Koray, Andrei Ratiu, Muhamet Yíldíz, ünal Zenginobuz, an Associate Editor and two referees of the Review of Economic Design for their enlightening comments on previous drafts. Earlier versions of this paper were written during my stay at Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona and at the Indian Statistical Institute. Both visits have been possible by the kindness of the host institutions and the financial support of the Turkish Academy of Sciences and Serem Ltd. It is a pleasure for me to express my gratitude to all these institutions. Of course, all possible errors are mine.     

Coalitional stability in the location problem with single-dipped preferences: An application of the minimax theorem

This study considers a situation in which agents choose the location of a public facility from a street according to a given mechanism. Agents have single-dipped preferences over a set of feasible locations. We analyze coalitional behavior for any given mechanism for this situation. We identify a necessary and sufficient condition for a mechanism to possess a strong Nash equilibrium by applying the minimax theorem of von Neumann and Morgenstern (1944). We introduce a class of core solutions and show that these solutions are characterized by strong Nash implementability. As a byproduct of these results, we propose a simple mechanism that implements any core solution in strong Nash equilibria.