The Normative Problem of Merit Goods in Perspective

Abstract

In his Theory of Public Finance (1959), Musgrave invented the concept of merit wants to describe public wants that are satisfied by goods provided by the government in violation of the principle of consumer sovereignty. Starting from Musgrave’s mature discussion (1987), I construct two categories to classify the explanations of merit goods. The first strand of thought attempts to justify merit goods within the New welfare economics, by modifying its assumptions to accommodate irrationality, uncertainty, lack of information, and psychic externalities. The second category encompasses more radical departures from consumer sovereignty, drawn from philosophical critiques of economics. In the third part of the paper, I argue that the two strands might be represented by a non-individualistic social welfare function. I also show how this solution echoes Musgrave’s early views on public expenditures before he coined the concept of merit wants. From an historical perspective, the survival of the concept highlights the persistence of a social point of view in welfare economics.     

States as Ecologies of Political Enterprises

This paper seeks to overcome an antinomy within the theory of political economy: while market outcomes are treated as resulting from polycentric competition, political outcomes are treated as resulting from hierarchic planning. We seek to overcome this antinomy by treating political outcomes as likewise resulting from polycentric competition, taking due account of relevant institutional differences. For example, a parliamentary assembly is treated as an extra-ordinary form of investment bank that intermediates between the sponsors of enterprises and those within the citizenry who have means to support those enterprises. What results is a theory in which political programs emerge in largely bottom-up fashion through complex networks of transactions. Much of the inspiration for this paper arises from the Italian School of Public Finance, particularly Mazzola, Montemartini, Pantaleoni and de Viti de Marco.     

Subjectivism,joint consumption and the state: Public goods in Staatswirtschaftslehre *

Abstract

On the basis of F.B.W. Hermann's Staatswirthschaftliche Untersuchungen and of major German, Austrian and Swedish contributions to public economics, two specific claims with regard to the Germanic influence in the development of public expenditure theory are put forward in this paper. It is contended that the German achievements concerning the conceptual clarification of public goods are: (i) important as conceptual ingredients of the modern ‘micro-based’ theory of the public sector: (ii) less closely linked to some historical and intellectual German Sonderweg (culminating in historism, a collectivistic view of social entities and a mystical glorification of the State) than is often suggested.

It is argued that these achievements rather were to a large extent inspired by the more cosmopolitan tendencies in German thought. An important influence is Kantian liberalism. Kant construed a kind of foundational interdependence between the public and the private sector. This prepares the ground for a framework of complementary institutions instead of explaining public institutions in terms of a market failure-perspective based on non-excludability: the view developed in German Idealism gives non-rivalry the pivotal role: the explanation of public institutions systematically hinges upon the existence of goods, the benefits of which are necessarily universal and hence are necessarily made available in a non-rival mode.     

全球公共物品理论研究

全球公共物品理论为全球化问题的解决提供了新思路。然而,中国的学术界对于全球公共物品理论的理解,还存在莫衷一是的现象,并倾向于把全球公共物品理论与国际公共物品理论混为一谈。这不仅制约了全球公共物品理论运用的效果,也影响了该理论的发展。为此,本文通过对全球公共物品理论和国际公共物品理论的辨析,提出了应该从三个维度来理解和认识全球公共物品理论的观点,进而对全球公共物品理论对传统公共物品理论的拓展问题进行了研究,旨在为全球化问题的解决提供正确的理论基础。     

Normative and positive theories of public finance: contrasting Musgrave and Buchanan

This paper assesses James M. Buchanan's claim of following a positive approach in stark contrast to the normative approach to public finance of Richard A. Musgrave. The goal of this paper is to shed light on the foundations of modern American public finance by analysing one aspect of the methodology of its two most prominent fathers. I show (1) that it is difficult to distinguish Musgrave's and Buchanan's theories of public goods along the positive/normative dividing line and (2) that Buchanan's theory can also be considered normative. In the first three parts, I follow the Weberian methodological tradition in looking for value judgements in the theories, and by reflecting on the nature of ideal types. In the last part, I propose a broader interpretation of Buchanan's methodological stance within the academic context of the 1960s.     

The Relationship between Behavioral and Attitudinal Trust: A Cross-cultural Study

We study the relationship between trust in an experiment and trust measured by means of popular survey items in different countries. Students from Chile, Colombia, India, Mexico and Sweden participate in a public goods game experiment and answer a set of standard attitudinal survey questions about trust. We find that behavioral trust and attitudinal trust significantly differ among countries. Behavioral trust is highest in Sweden, followed by Latin America, and lowest in India. Attitudinal trust is highest in Chile and Sweden, followed by India and Mexico, and lowest in Colombia. Further, the predictive power of survey items also differs among countries. Trust measured by survey items is significantly related to behavioral trust in some but not in all societies. No single survey item predicts actual trust across all countries. Plausible explanations of the inconsistent relationship between behavioral and attitudinal trust across countries are discussed.     

为什么不同时期不同国家提供的公共产品不同?——兼论中西公共财政的异同

本对不同时期不同国家公共产品（Public Goods)提供的不同状况的原因作了分析,认为公共产品提供的差异是公共选择的结果。并在个人理性与集体理性的一致性的前提下,从技术、传统化等角度对公共产品提供这一制度变迁过程进行了探讨。最后,本指出公共产品提供的差异性对我国建立公共财政框架的启示意义。     

论城市准公共物品的合理提供

城市准公共物品在城市经济发展中起着十分重要的作用。我国城市准公共物品的供给方式已多样化,但仍存在总量供给不足和供给结构不合理等现象。本文以满足公共需要、注重效率和公平作为依据,提出几种改进措施,以促进城市准公共物品的合理提供。     

城市公园供给方式的模型分析

本文建立了一个可以描述各类公共品的理论模型,提出了公共品供给的目标——社会福利和社会公平最大化之间的权衡,并在模型框架下以具体数值例子演示了具有受益排他性和消费竞争性的混和公共品如何达到最优供给,从理论上为城市公园供给方式的研究提供了一个新的视角。     

实验经济学的兴起与公共产品理论的发展

实验经济学是经济学的一个新的分支,其研究内容主要包括个人决策、市场交易、博弈论、学习理论和方法论。它的兴起对公共财政论的核心理论——公共产品理论产生了影响,加深了搭便车问题的研究,对如何有效提供公共产品从实验角度给出了有益的启示,推动了公共产品理论的研究。     

Institutional Foundations of Heritage Railways: The High Cost of Low Trust in the Preservation of Merit Goods

This article is an empirical inquiry into the nature and causes of the preservation and reuse of railway heritage from a comparative point of view. It addresses the question of why this heritage is not preserved in Andalusia (Spain). Railway heritage is a mixed good, as a public good requires either the public or the not-for-profit sector to intervene to ensure its preservation. In the case of a merit good, it is legitimate for the government to interfere with consumer preferences. The results suggest that three factors directly impact the preservation of railway heritage: (i) the quality of government, (ii) volunteering, and (iii) collective preferences. The first two factors depend on social capital as measured by generalized trust, while the third one is idiosyncratic.     

专用性公共品与企业性质:一种新观点

文章提出了一种新的企业观,即企业是为获取专用性公共品帕累托最优解的经济组织.任何生产活动都离不开公共品和私人物品.受成本约束,政府通常只会提供通用性公共品,专用于企业的公共品通常只能由企业自身来提供.但是当收益不能在各合约当事人之间作线性分配时,由各合约当事人自主提供公共品会严格劣于帕累托最优量.政府提供的公共品与企业自身提供的专用性公共品具有一定程度的替代性.模型证明,随着政府提供的公共品增加,当合作收益较大时,会导致企业规模趋于扩大;当合作收益较小时,企业规模趋于缩小,市场分工趋于发达.文章还对企业专用性公共品的内容进行了详细分析.     

Country size and the voluntary provision of international public goods

Standard studies on voluntary contributions to an international public good treat national economies as if they were single agents. This masks the fact that nations are comprised of populations of citizens, whose collective benefits a national government takes account of when deciding on the amount of the contributions. This paper constructs a model which explicitly allows for the effect of population differences and explores their consequences. We can then present the so-called exploitation of the great by the small by Olson and Zeckhauser [Olson, M., Zeckhauser, R., 1966. An economic theory of alliances. Review of Economics and Statistics 48 (1966) 266–279] and explore how residents of larger countries fare relative to those in smaller countries. We also elaborate on the effects of changing populations and show that growing into a large country is not necessarily beneficial for the country's residents.     

促进中小企业集群发展的公共政策研究

本文根据公共产品的内核和特征,给出中小企业集群的公共产品的定义和特征,将集群公共产品划分为初始公共产品和衍生公共产品,指出集群公共产品在中小企业集群形成和发展、对提高群内中小企业竞争力等方面发挥着不可替代的作用,提出了促进中小企业集群发展的公共政策体系的建议。     

Rewards and Sanctions and the Provision of Public Goods in One-Shot Settings

A burgeoning literature in experimental studies of the Voluntary Contribution Mechanism focuses on the ability of institutions that allow the monitoring, sanctioning, and/or rewarding of others to facilitate cooperation. In this paper rewards and sanctions are examined in a one-shot VCM setting that so far has been unexplored in the literature. The study finds that while some subjects are willing to reward and sanction others at a personal cost, the opportunity to reward or sanction is ineffective in facilitating cooperation relative to previous experiments in which a repeated game environment is employed. The study also compares behavior in an environment in which the imposition of rewards and sanctions is certain to an environment in which imposition is uncertain. The expected value of the reward or sanction is kept constant across environments to focus simply on the effect of uncertainty about imposition. Uncertainty does not change behavior in a significant way, either in the level of cooperation or the willingness of individuals to impose rewards or sanctions.     

A generalized impure public good and linear characteristics model of green consumption

This paper provides a general framework for understanding consumer behavior related to goods and services that may be considered environmentally friendly, ethically produced, fairly traded, or some combination thereof. We generalize the impure public good model and derive its comparative static properties. The model accounts for any number of impure public (green) goods and joint production of any number of both private and public characteristics. The generalization provides a bridge between the impure public good model and the well-known linear characteristics model, both of which are special cases of the model developed here. The results show how demand for green goods and characteristics such as environmental quality depends on wealth, exogenously given levels of public goods, and the technologies of joint production. The effects of changes in technology depend critically on whether jointly produced characteristics are complements or substitutes in consumption. Several of the results are rather counterintuitive and differ in meaningful ways from existing models of impure public goods and linear characteristics. The results also illuminate several reasons for greater caution about whether it is reasonable to assume that green goods and services are necessarily beneficial for the provision of public goods.     

双维度下的公共产品概念及其现实意义

萨缪尔森等人从经济角度所定义的公共产品概念,忽视了对"公共"的详察,其现实意义受到了质疑.为切实反映公共产品的本质和研究的现实意义,对公共产品概念的界定至少应该从主体维度和客体维度两个方向进行.毕竟,公共产品是一个综合性的概念,并且针对目前歧义产生和争论的焦点,对概念的本质解读应重点落脚于"公共"而不是"产品".应该说,公共产品本身就是一个综合概念,至少可以体现在主体(政治)和客体(经济)维度上.历史地、具体地认识公共产品的本质,界定其概念,有助于我们透过现象看本质,正确地区分与公共产品相联系的一些社会经济甚至政治现象.     

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     

收入水平与公共品需求结构关系探讨

在影响公共品需求结构的诸多因素中,收入水平的高低为最关键,收入水平与公共品需求结构有着直接的关系。按照需求弹性可将公共品分为高端产品、中端产品和低端产品三种类型。通过对收入水平不同群体的效用差异分析,推导出均衡公共品需求结构的形成与公共品收入扩展线。理论分析表明公共品需求结构随着收入增加而逐渐由低端产品向高端产品转移,并在一定经济水平出现拐点,从而为研究公共品的最佳供给结构提供了理论依据和基础。     

河南省农村公共物品投资的收入效应研究

通过运用面板数据模型对河南省农村公共物品部门固定资产投资对农民收入的影响进行分析,主要结论表明,河南省农村公共物品投资对农民收入的增长起到了积极的推动作用.当前,河南省农村公共物品供给匮乏且结构不合理,河南省农村人均收入和人均累计公共物品投资的地区差距在逐渐拉大.针对这些问题,我们应采取相应措施,以进一步提高河南省农民的收入水平.