公共物品的供给方式探讨--从香港模式看大陆的公共物品供给

一、公共物品及其特性公共物品是社会经济发展中必不可少的部分。公共物品“是被生产出来,生产者无法决定谁来得到它”(弗里德曼,1986)。换句话说,公共物品一旦被生产出来,生产者就无法排斥那些不为此商品付费的人,或者排他的成本很高,以至于排他成为不可能的事情,即公共物品具有非排他性。萨缪尔森认为:公共物品是指每个人对该商品的消费不会造成其他人消费的减少,即具有非竞争性。从上面的定义可以看出,公共物品具有三个特性:非排他性,无法排除他人从公共物品中获得利益或者经济技术处置可具有排他性,但是成本太高,导致经济上的不可行;非…     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Information Provision in Procurement Auctions

We study the optimal provision of information in a procurement auction with horizontally differentiated goods. The buyer has private information about her preferred location on the product space and has access to a costless communication device. A seller who pays the entry cost may submit a bid comprising a location and a minimum price. We characterize the optimal information structure and show that the buyer prefers to attract only two bids. Further, additional sellers are inefficient since they reduce total and consumer surplus, gross of entry costs. We show that the buyer will not find it optimal to send public information to all sellers. On the other hand, she may profit from setting a minimum price and that a severe hold‐up problem arises if she lacks commitment to set up the rules of the auction ex ante.     

Strategic Complementarity in the Dynamic Private Provision of a Discrete Public Good

Individual voluntary contributions to a discrete public good are shown to be strategic complements in a dynamic private provision game. This is in contrast to a public good that can take on any value in a continuum where they are strategic substitutes.     

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.     

Ambiguity and Public Good Provision in Large Societies

In this paper, we consider the effect of ambiguity on the private provision of public goods. Equilibrium is shown to exist and be unique. We examine how provision of the public good changes as the size of the population increases. We show that when there is uncertainty, there may be less free‐riding in large societies.     

Economic Integration and Public Provision of Education

This paper develops a model of fiscal competition in public provision of a private good: education. In this framework, the welfare enhancing effects of public education provision are shown to be reduced by increased student mobility when, like in the EU, countries are unable to set differentiated fees to foreign students. Indeed, the threat of attraction of foreigners who free-ride on the national education system may induce suboptimal levels of public education provision when (price) discrimination is forbidden. Alternatively, countries may try to escape regulation and avoid equal treatment of foreign students. The paper provides some empirical evidence of the existence of a fiscal externality in education at the EU level.     

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.     

Repeated Interaction and the Public Provision of Private Goods

The literature suggests that governments can use in-kind transfers to design efficient and targeted redistribution schemes if individual incomes are not directly observable. We investigate the extent to which the self-selection property of in-kind transfers carries through if redistributive transfers are made repeatedly. In a two-period setting, the government may gain information about the individuals' incomes in the first period and exploit this information for making targeted transfers in the second-period. This, however, also triggers changes in the individuals' behavior. If the government can commit to its future policy, the least cost policy may involve randomization between cash and in-kind transfers. Without commitment, the dynamic setting works against the government's interest. It may no longer be able to use in-kind transfers to generate information about the individuals' types.
JEL classification : H 42; H 2     

Product Safety Provision and Consumers' Information

Economic mechanisms related to the provision of product safety are explored, with particular attention paid to the structure of consumers' information. The case of perfect information, of experience goods (for which consumers detect product safety after consumption) and of credence goods (where consumers cannot link a disease to a particular product consumed in the past) are explored. Imperfect competition is assumed in the supply sector. In the case of both perfect information and experience goods, market equilibrium is characterised by a less-than-socially optimal provision of safety, when the safety effort is costly. With credence goods, imperfect information leads to the absence of safety effort and to a market closure. Different types of public regulation aiming at increasing consumer protection and circumventing market failures are explored. Particular attention is paid to minimum safety standards, labels and liability enforcement. The relative efficiency of these instruments depends on the information structure. In the cases of perfect information and experience goods, a minimum safety standard can be an efficient instrument. Regulation is necessary but not sufficient to avoid market failure in the case of credence goods.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Monetary Shocks, Inflation and the Asymmetric Adjustment of EU Output

Empirical studies have suggested that price rigidities ensure that real output responds asymmetrically to monetary shocks. Models advanced by Tsiddon and Ball and Mankiw argue that the degree of asymmetry to demand shocks is sensitive to inflation. This study tests whether this is the case for a sample of EU economies. Maximum likelihood estimation offers confirmation of output asymmetry in the cases of Germany and Italy but no such evidence in France and the UK.     

公共选择理论视角中的腐败问题

腐败问题是全球面临的一个严重的社会问题。反腐败是促进中国社会发展和进步、加强政党执政能力和政府治理能力建设的重要前提。公共选择理论为人们正确认识腐败现象的本质、探讨反腐败的对策提供了新的视角。