Guiding private afforestation to raise public goods provision: Understanding farmers' multi-dimensional preferences for trees in India

Exposing an overlooked ambiguity in how philosophers use the term ‘public good,’ this paper proposes to distinguish between inherently and contingently public goods, where inherently public goods are non-rivalrous and non-excludable in principle (e.g., national security) and contingently public goods are non-rivalrous and deliberately provided in a non-exclusionary way (e.g., parks). This distinction is conducive to philosophical debate in two ways. At the level of ideal theory, contingently public goods reveal the inadequacy of the various benefit principles that have been proposed to ensure justice in the provision of public goods (Claassen 2013; Miller and Taylor 2018; Murphy and Nagel 2001). Because these goods could be provided as club goods, benefit principles mandate unacceptable transfer payments to the privately wealthy and to people who disvalue their inclusive mode of provision. At the level of non-ideal theory, contingently public goods constitute a natural yet underappreciated focal point for effectively rectifying injustices. While all public goods promise to render access to private resources less relevant, contingently public goods hold special potential: their provision may be costless and involve no market interference, it can more powerfully express a commitment to status equality and it can be especially effective at addressing inequalities in opportunity.

There is a growing interest among state and local government officials in the possibility of privatization of the provision of public goods. In the face of increasing opposition to tax increases and government growth, the transfer of responsibility for the delivery and pricing of services from the public sector to the private sector becomes an attractive option. Assessment of the impact of the transfer from public to private institutional arrangements upon provision of public goods requires that properties of the private and public equilibria be established. In a series of provocative papers the possibility of private market provision of public goods has been explored. Building upon early contributions by Thompson [10] and Demsetz [5], both competitive [7] and monopoly [3; 2; 4] models have been developed in an attempt to characterize private market solutions to the public goods allocation problem under conditions of costless exclusion. A common conclusion of these recent papers is that private provision of excludable public goods is inefficient. The private pricing mechanism results in underallocation of resources to the production of public goods capacity and in the underutilization of the capacity which is produced. The implication is that, relative to the first-best Lindahl-type public equilibrium, the private equilibrium represents an inferior alternative. Although the Lindahl solution provides an appropriate benchmark for pure theoretical inquiry, the actual process of privatization develops from a majority voting status quo in the public sector. In this paper we wish to extend the scope of comparative analysis to the case of private market versus majority voting public sector provision of excludable public goods. The concept of public sector equilibrium employed is that of median voter equilibrium. This concept has become a standard within the theoretical public goods literature [1] and has enjoyed some recent empirical support as well [6]. The particular research issue we will address is the identification of conditions under which a majority of the consumer/voters would prefer the private monopoly outcome to the public monopoly outcome. Given the increasing interest in the privatization of public service delivery, the framework of analysis contained in this paper would seem to be of significant potential public policy import. A nonexhaustive list of potential candidate services for monopoly privatization would include roads, waterways, parks, museums, zoos, and airports. We employ consumer surplus analysis to determine the percentage of voters who prefer the private monopoly solution to the public outcome. Successful privatization requires majority support from an interesting coalition of low and high demanders of the public good. Low demanders

Political Animals Revisited

Can ethnically distinct communities ruled through “traditional” assemblies provide public goods and services better, than when they are ruled by leaders elected through “modern” multiparty elections? We exploit a unique institutional feature in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, where municipalities are ruled by traditional governance institutions, to explore the effect of these forms of governance on the provision of public goods. Using locality-level census data, we study the provision of local public goods through a geographic discontinuity approach. We demonstrate that communities ruled by traditional governance practices offer more effective provision of local public goods than equally poor communities ruled by political parties. Relying on qualitative fieldwork and household surveys, we argue that the significant differences in the provision of public goods according to governance regime derive from community practices that solve collective action problems, enhance citizen participation in public decisions, and restrain elite capture.

We develop a theory of primary elections and the provision of public and private goods. In our model, candidates from two parties compete for the support of "core" party voters in their respective primary elections and "swing" voters in a general election. Candidates within a party share a fixed ideology and offer platforms that distribute a unit of public spending across group-specific private goods and public goods. Without primaries, candidates offer only public goods when they are very valuable, and only private goods to the swing group otherwise. Because public goods appeal to both types of voters, primary elections increase their provision under a broad set of conditions. The level of public good provision is nonmonotonic in ideological polarization. The prediction of increased public goods spending following the adoption of primaries matches patterns in capital expenditures across US states.

Generally, it is not socially efficient for the provision of local public goods in a system of competing regional jurisdictions, because local public goods have spillover effect. However, the provision of local public goods which involves the free mobile individuals is Pareto optimal. Though only maximizing the utility of their own residents, regional governments perfectly internalize the externalities associated with their provision of public goods by taking the free mobile individuals into consideration. The implication is that there is no role for a national authority in either providing interregional transfers or correcting for decentralized provision of public goods. These analysis are characterized by Nash equilibrium.This paper examines the provision of local public goods which are characterized by Stackelberg equilibrium-one local government is Stackelberg leader, the other is Stackelberg follower. The result of this analysis is that Stackelberg equilibrium is not always Pareto optimal and there is a possibility of the free rider problem. This means achieving a Pareto optimal will require intervention by a national authority.

Les principes de protection des intérêts diffus et des biens collectifs :

The thesis aims at analysing the role of collective action as a viable alternative to the traditional forms of intervention in agriculture in order to encourage the provision of agri-environmental public goods. Which are the main benefits of collective action, in terms of effectiveness and efficiency, compared to traditional market or public intervention policies? What are the drivers that encourage farmers to participate into collective action? To what extent it is possible to incorporate collective aspects into policies aimed at providing agri-environmental public goods? With the objective of addressing these research questions, the thesis is articulated in two levels: a theoretical analysis on the role of collective action in the provision of public goods and a specific investigation of two local initiative,s were an approach collective management of agro-environmental resources was successfully implemented. The first case study concerns a project named “Custodians of the Territory”, developed by the local agency in Tuscany “Comunita Montana Media Valle del Serchio”, which settled for an agreement with local farmers for a collective provision of environmental services related to the hydro-geological management of the district. The second case study is related to the territorial agri-environmental agreement experimented in Valdaso (Marche), where local farmers have adopted integrated pest management practices collectively with the aim of reducing the environmental impact of their farming practices. The analysis of these initiatives, carried out through participatory methods (Rapid Rural Appraisal), allowed developing a theoretical discussion on the role of innovative tools (such as co-production and co-management) in the provision of agri-environmental public goods. The case studies also provided some recommendations on the government intervention and policies needed to promote successful collective action for the provision of agri-environmental public goods.

Several branches of the literature focus on the advantages of the provision of public goods by a local government. Tiebout (1956) indicated thatvoting with feetleads to the optimal provision of local public goods if residents can emigrate from one municipality to another to maximize utility. Due to the free mobility of residents, local governments exhibit an inter-related performance in a competitive environment and are disciplined to achieve efficient provision of public goods, although rather unrealistic conditions, including perfect information andfree mobilityof residents, are pre-requested. The theory of local yardstick competition, in the principalagent setting with asymmetric information, states that the comparison of the public service level and tax rates of a government with that of nearby localities can provide a useful instrument to assess a governments performance. By comparing the performance of similar jurisdictions, voters can elect good politicians and send non-performers packing. Due to such a yardstick comparison of residents, local governors are disciplined to exert maximum efforts toward supplying public goods (Besley and Case 1996, Besley and Smart 2007), although they fail in the optimal provision of public goods (Nishigaki et al. 2015). Furthermore, a political inter-relation among neighboring jurisdictions causes interdependence in policy decisions and mimicking of policy variables or tax rates in the yardstick competition. This interdependence of policy or tax rates caused by informational externality is frequently used as evidence of yardstick competition in empirical studies (Besley and Case 1996, Revelli 2006, Nishigaki et al. 2014). Tax competition among local governments, on the other hand, addresses interaction due to inter-jurisdictional mobility of the tax base. By using a competitive two-region model, studies have indicated that an unfavorable externality of loss in the tax base causes strategic behavior in tax setting and an undersupply of public goods arises as a result of intergovernmental competition (Wildersin 1988, Brueckner and Saavedra 2001). These studies have also indicated that even competition among benevolent governments with full information leads to unfavorable results. By introducing the production of private and public goods using the inter-regionally mobile factor of capital stock, this paper investigates tax competition in a yardstick competition model. The harmful effects of under-provision of public goods caused by tax competition and political competition are synthesized in the yardstick equilibrium. Furthermore, it is indicated that the externality caused by the loss in capital stock is internalized through the informational externality of the yardstick comparison.

This chapter explores the provision of European public goods and offers a framework for their identification and governance. While identification of European public goods draws from the insight of fiscal federalism, institutional and legal instruments exist to manage economic trade-offs and to find institutional arrangements for public-good provision, to maximize the benefits of public goods for EU members. The institutional and legal framework offers instruments and principles to effectively address this trade-off. This paper considers five levers that allow for the customization of public goods at either EU or Member States level (or both), taking into account the specific characteristics of each. These include the allocation of competences within the margins of the Treaty; the decision-making rules in the Council; the provision of public goods at the level of ‘clubs’ of member states with similar preferences organized within or outside the Treaty; a variable combination of centralization/decentralization of rule-making, financing, and delivery of public goods; and compensation or redistributive mechanisms to achieve greater alignment of preferences. One of the principal implications of the legal contribution to the discourse on European public goods is that the question of whether public goods should be provided at the national or European level may be a misguided one. The pertinent question, therefore, is how to establish institutional frameworks for the provision of public goods, with a view to optimizing the benefits of such goods for EU members. While the EU remains severely constrained in ensuring funding of European public goods, the theory of institutional and fiscal congruence offers normative guidance on optimal EU public finance.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to quantify the effects of regional income disparity and social diversity on local public goods delivery in Indonesia.Design/methodology/approachUsing Indonesian provincial data over the period 2001–2014 and by way of System GMM, this paper circumvents endogeneity and persistence of key variables over time which may bias the estimated impact of the critical variables.FindingsThe result provides no significant evidence on the influence of regional income inequality on the provision of local public goods. The result reveals that ethnic diversity is associated with the more extensive provision of local public goods. A large difference in preferences toward public goods provision in a fragmented society such as Indonesia forces the local government to deliver a greater mixed of public goods to accommodate various preferences for public goods and ensure that each group has equal access to public goods. Political fragmentation within an ethnically heterogeneous society also encourages local politicians to provide a larger provision of public goods to form an inter-ethnic coalition to gain local political access.Practical implicationsThe significant effect of ethnic diversity on public goods provision implies a set of policy recommendation for Indonesian Government in order to maintain peace within the country. The central government should establish a clear-cut standard of local public goods provision for local governments to ensure that that anyone has equal access to public goods regardless of ethnicity. This will mitigate the possibility of ethnic conflict in an ethnically plural society.Originality/valueThis paper extends its analysis using both fractionalization and polarization indexes to measure the social diversity in Indonesia to obtain a comprehensive knowledge regarding the influence of ethnic diversity on the public good provision. This paper proposes a set of policy recommendation for Indonesian Government to manage the effect of social diversity on the provision of local public goods. To the author’s knowledge, this has never been done before for Indonesia.Peer reviewThe peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/IJSE-12-2018-0661

The satisfaction of farmers with the supply of rural public goods is an importantindicator of the effectiveness of rural public goods investment. Using cross-sectionaldata on 400 farmers in five counties of China’s Shaanxi province, this study adoptsordinal logit and probit models to investigate rural residents’ satisfaction and theinfluencing factors in the supply of public goods. The empirical results indicate thatthe income of farmers has a significantly negative impact on their satisfaction, farmerswho were consulted in the process of public goods supply have higher satisfactionlevels than farmers who were not, and farmers who profited from the supply of publicgoods are more satisfied than those who did not. Additionally, other factors have asignificant impact on the satisfaction of certain public products. For example, the olderthe respondents, the higher their satisfaction with medical hygiene service and highereducation levels among the respondents reduce their satisfaction with compulsoryeducation. Our empirical results provide a relevant reference for governmentdepartments in China.

This paper mainly studies the effect of village-level power supervision reform on the rural supply of public goods. In this paper, the panel data of 100 villages in five provinces of China from 2005 to 2019 are used to identify and analyze the impact of the supervision policy on the supply of rural public goods. The study adopted PSM-DID as the identification strategy to alleviate the endogenous problem of the model; it found that the supervision policy significantly improved the supply of public goods in villages, and increased the satisfaction of villagers with the village economic base and public social services. There is regional heterogeneity in the improvement effect of policy on public goods supply, which mainly reflects the regions with weak economic development. This policy mainly promotes the optimization of public goods supply by strengthening villagers’ public participation, and promoting the improvement of the current situation of public goods by restraining village cadres’ duty behaviors. It is also found that the coupling of clan power and village formal authority can inhibit the positive effects brought by the policy, and only in areas with strong clan power can the negative effects be mitigated. Moreover, there is an alternative relationship between the assessment pressure of village cadres and the supervision force sent to the countryside, which will form a situation of excessive supervision and inhibit the optimization of village public goods. The conclusion of this paper provides empirical support for the view that “top-down external institutional supervision and bottom-up internal democratic supervision should be effectively integrated” in the theory of village power supervision.

When clients vote for brokers: How elections improve public goods provision in urban slums

A Global Map of Amenities: Public Goods, Ethnic Divisions and Decentralization