Concept Of Public Goods Research Articles

Global governance for sustainable energy: The contribution of a global public goods approach

Achieving a sustainable energy future requires a revolution in the energy system. At the heart of such a transformation lies strong and coherent governance at all political levels, including the global level. While the need for global governance is taken for granted in a number of issue areas such as health, peacekeeping and environment, pursuit of global energy governance has been almost a taboo in political and foreign policy circles and has also had limited attention in the literature. In this paper, we explore how the viewing of a sustainable energy system as a global public good could serve as one approach to reducing the sensitivity towards global energy governance. The global public good concept together with the principle of subsidiarity is applied as a framework for understanding the role that the international community could play in, and the key ingredients for, global energy governance. Using two examples of international energy efficiency and renewable energy policy, we identify some types of international collaboration measures that would be both efficient and necessary to support a sustainable energy system.

The global public good concept: a means of promoting good veterinary governance

At the outset, the concept of a 'public good' was associated with economic policies. However, it has now evolved not only from a national to a global concept (global public good), but also from a concept applying solely to the production of goods to one encompassing societal issues (education, environment, etc.) and fundamental rights, including the right to health and food. Through their actions, Veterinary Services, as defined by the Terrestrial Animal Health Code (Terrestrial Code) of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), help to improve animal health and reduce production losses. In this way they contribute directly and indirectly to food security and to safeguarding human health and economic resources. The organisation and operating procedures of Veterinary Services are therefore key to the efficient governance required to achieve these objectives. The OIE is a major player in global cooperation and governance in the fields of animal and public health through the implementation of its strategic standardisation mission and other programmes for the benefit of Veterinary Services and OIE Member Countries. Thus, the actions of Veterinary Services and the OIE deserve to be recognised as a global public good, backed by public investment to ensure that all Veterinary Services are in a position to apply the principles of good governance and to comply with the international standards for the quality of Veterinary Services set out in the OIE Terrestrial Code (Section 3 on Quality of Veterinary Services) and Aquatic Animal Health Code (Section 3 on Quality of Aquatic Animal Health Services).

Earth observation and the public good

The term ‘public good’ is often used in satellite Earth observation to indicate that Earth observation data are of value or interest to the public. In fact, the term ‘public good’ has a more specific meaning, originating in the discipline of Economics, which carries with it a set of assumptions and implications about how markets operate. In this context a public good has two main characteristics: non-rivalry and non-excludability. In their most common digital format, Earth observation data can appear to be both non-rivalrous and non-excludable. However, it is not the digital medium itself which controls the ‘publicness’ of a good but the conditions of access to that good. This paper explores the meaning of the concept of public goods in an Earth observation context by, first, examining public good theory and related concepts of categories of goods and, second, applying the concepts to nine Earth observation missions, programmes and data.

Evolving Institutional Structure and Public Policy Environment of Critical Infrastructures

For the foreseeable future, the United States’ critical infrastructures will be a major focus for homeland security while contributing greatly to the prosperity of the states and the private sector. The designation of critical infrastructures has evolved from a vague concept of public goods before the 1990s, through Executive Orders and presidential directives of the 1990s, and has been enshrined in the Critical Infrastructures Protection Act and the Homeland Security Act. This scope of critical infrastructures, the first of two challenging issues, has matured through interpretations provided in Presidential administration policy development, various national strategies, blue ribbon reports, white papers, case law and government funded economic stimulus programs. The second challenge is one of coordination, raising uncertainties from the evolving goals of various authorities in the interpretation and implementation of critical infrastructure mandates. These authorities include the: President, Congress, courts, various federal agencies, special purpose boards, states, standards development organizations, nongovernmental organizations and the private sector. Although the private sector owns or operates most critical infrastructures, the identification, risk management and investment stimulus for critical infrastructures remains fragmented, episodic and uncertain. A complex institutional structure aggravates clarity for each authority due to overlapping and potentially contradictory duties. Furthermore, sector-specific regulation, industry cooperation and free market pressures complicate the prioritization of critical infrastructure investment by both public and private interests. This article reviews the public policy development of critical infrastructure to guide interpretation of the relative critical infrastructure development and protection roles for states, non-governmental organizations, the private sector and federal agencies.

Financial Stability as a Global Public Good: Critical Assessments

Recently, a new conceptional framework which is related to the public goods has emerged. This framework that is called as global public goods concept contains various goods and services definitions. In this context, financial stability is also accepted as a global public good. The objective of the study is to do critical evaluations concerning the financial stability as a global public good after examining the global public good and financial stability concepts.

Can a sub-optimal tournament be optimal when the prize can be collectively consumed? The case of college football's national championship

One of the most heated debates in all of sports is the annual debate over major college football's national champion. Since its implementation in 1995, the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) system has often failed to quell the controversy concerning what team is the Division 1 Football Bowl Subdivision football champion. Many of the BCS controversies have spawned changes in the title selection format, while others are perhaps the result of certain changes. What remains now is the cry from some college football fans for an expanded ‘national championship playoff,’ though college and university presidents and many college football coaches continue to resist these cries. We try to explain this resistance to expanding the number of teams invited to compete for the BCS championship and the persistence of the two team playoff format in college football. For three championship eras–pre-BCS, BCS and a futuristic post-BCS expanded playoff–we first relate some of the controversial details to concepts such as optimal tournaments and the public goods concept of collective consumption.

Partnering Across Sectors, Building Global Ventures (IOMBA 2009)

This course takes a practical perspective on how to build for-profit, not-for-profit private or public private partnership (PPP) entities with a strategic perspective on social change. For centuries, thinkers like William Petty (1623-1687), Adam Smith (1723-1790), and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) argued for the large-scale provision of public goods. This finally became a reality with the rise of the welfare state in the twentieth century. Today, the concept of public goods is omnipresent in policy discussions. Yet, large gaps remain in the provision of public goods around the world and it is becoming more difficult to finance the welfare state in industrialized economies. Combined with the belief that private companies are often run more efficiently than government bodies, the need to secure additional funding has catalyzed the emergence of interesting collaborations: (i) between public bodies (local, regional, or central) and private companies, or public-private partnerships (PPPs); (ii) social enterprises, which build a commitment to the greater public good into the DNA of a private, for-profit company. The course focus is on identifying delivery gaps and opportunities, and bringing ideas into a format where they can be turned into a competitive business plan. The course was developed by Maximilian Martin for the IOMBA program for the 2009 spring semester, and co-taught by Maximilian Martin, Andreas Ernst and Tim Nielander.

The political economy of Coase's lighthouse in history (Part II): Lighthouse development along the coast of China

As a sequel to a critical discussion of the debate on the question of public goods in connection with Coase's historical analysis of the lighthouses in Britain (published in TPR 79.4), this case study concerns the provision of a Chinese lighthouse, Gap Rock Light, by a British Crown Colony, Hong Kong. The study is informed by the precise meanings of key economic concepts of public goods and a free market, the reality of levying light dues on the basis of tonnage, and the changing nature of the lighthouse due to technological advances in shipping.

The political economy of Coase's lighthouse in history (Part I): A review of the theories and models of the provision of a public good

As a contribution to policy planning for public goods provision, Part I of this multi-disciplinary article critically reviews the literature and facts for and against the 1974 paper by Ronald Coase on the lighthouse; discusses theoretical issues omitted; and develops a model that characterises an alternative mode of light due collection under different cost and demand conditions. The review and discussion, informed by the precise meanings of key concepts of public goods and a free market, are relevant for a study and application of the economics of planning as well as the changing nature of the lighthouse due to technological advances in shipping.

Global public goods and commons: theoretical challenges for a changing world

Of the many theoretical developments in economics during the latter half of the 20th century, few can rival the concepts of public goods and the ‘tragedy of the commons’ in terms of their widely perceived breadth of application. In the first few years of the 21st century, interest in public goods and ‘bads’ has intensified, partly through the perception that many of the urgent issues facing mankind involve significant interregional, indeed international, interdependence. This growth of interest is reflected in, and may have been stimulated by, the volumes associated with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and edited by Kaul et al. (1999, 2003, 2007). The costs and benefits associated with many human activities spill over jurisdictional boundaries, thereby generating externalities which are often reciprocal and, in the judgment of many, quantitatively significant. For this reason, it seemed appropriate to draw attention to some of the current and prospective developments in these topics by choosing global public goods and commons as the theme of the Congress in August 2007. This conference volume contains two of the invited papers. Four further papers are devoted to topics that, in one way or another, can be seen as studying problems arising from interdependence between jurisdictions. In 1954, Paul Samuelson wrote a famously short paper in which, apparently somewhat arbitrarily, he chose the notion of a public good as the idea on which to hang a demonstration of the power of simple mathematical reasoning to illuminate economic ideas. His formal analysis developed the famous Samuelson condition for the optimal

The Vancouver Community Network, Social Investing and Public Good Models of ICT development

This paper links discussions of community access to ICTs to discussions of sustainability in the non-profit community and the viability of public good models of ICT development. It addresses the concepts of public goods and social entrepreneurship and their relationship to new funding sources for non-profit organizations. The paper examines the Vancouver Community Network’s investigation of for-profit service models to diversify the organization’s revenue stream. The paper suggests that the VCN has the potential to develop a project that may provide the basis for a new generation of community networking in Canada, based upon a new organizational structure model.

Emergence of Cooperation in Public Goods Problems

In this paper, we discuss several issues related to public goods provision. Unlike many Austrians, we do not think that the concept of public goods - or of collective action - is an inherently flawed idea, even though we reject the alleged welfare implications of public goods theory, as proposed by orthodox public finance literature. We then argue that the structure of a generic public goods problem is more a game of chicken or an assurance game than a prisoner's dilemma and that this has important implications with regard to the plausibility of cooperative outcomes. Namely, when the public goods problem has the weakest-link structure and can be represented as an assurance game, then the cooperative outcome will be self-enforcing. In many cases, the public goods problems can be transformed into weakest-link games or different mechanisms can be found to ensure cooperation. We also discuss the difference between a public goods problem and collusion. We assert that, unlike public goods problems, collusive agreements have the structure of a prisoner's dilemma. Overall, our paper suggests that there are reasons to be optimistic about stability and efficiency of stateless societal orders.

IntroductionEvolution, public goods, and the state

F ifty years ago, the concept of a public good was understood only in casual terms. It took the formalizations of Paul Samuelson, Mancur Olson, and others in the 1960s to bring its remarkable properties to the full attention of the social science world. Those properties are its indivisibility — it cannot easily be divided up and parceled out to people according to their individual demand for it — its nonexcludability — people cannot easily be excluded from its use — and its nonsubtractibility — one person’s consumption or use of the good does not reduce the amount of the good available for the use of others. With these properties well in hand, scholars in various social science fields revolutionized thinking about public policy; 4, 5 the design of institutions; 7, 8, 9 obstacles and solutions to social dilemmas (prisoner’s dilemmas, public good dilemmas, commons dilemmas — articles on them now number in the thousands); the establishment of governments; 11 the outbreak of war; 13, 14 the failures of economic markets; 16 and so on. The concept of public goods was the centerpiece of the new field of rational choice, which made formidable inroads into the traditional fields of international relations, political science, economics, sociology, and psychology. The nearly moribund field of political economy was redefined and reinvigorated through exploration of applications of public good and related concepts. The articles in this issue attempt to extend the minirevolutions into yet another field, the field of evolutionary biology, by demonstrating (1) the crucial role that public goods may have played in the evolution of sharing behavior and collective identity, not exclusively, but primarily of the human sort; and (2) how public goods contribute to the explanation of evolved social behaviors, in particular, those behaviors that are precursors of the formation of the state. Foremost among them are religious ideology, national identity, and a host of behaviors that have resulted in the formation of the institutions of the state: law, hierarchy, and the structures and processes that provide and disperse public goods. This follows on Jared Diamond’s widely popular and well-reasoned books on the evolution of modern states and societies, and the conditions that provoke their collapse. In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond describes in compelling fashion not only how varied ecologies created or stymied technological change, but also the conditions suited to the emergence of societies at various stages of development. In Collapse, he cites the general conditions determining the collapse of societies. Articles in this issue refer to what we believe is a crucial lacuna in Diamond’s work — the critical role of public-good provision as a purpose behind state formation, as an essential element of the creation of collective identities needed for state formation, and as a variable that lends support, and poses challenges, to the formation and maintenance of states over time. Peter Corning’s article on ‘‘Holistic Darwinism’’ warns us about overstating the importance of public goods. There are many paths to the evolution of human cooperation, affiliation, large-scale collective identity, and state formation, and activities that involve the dispersal of public goods constitute just one of those paths. Still, public goods seem to be at the heart of the rationale for state formation. Furthermore, their provision in the form of state institutions remains to be fully explained. The explanation of human cooperation, collective identity, as well as group and state formation, have been hampered by realization of the doi: 10.2990/26_2_2

Why Public Goods are a Pedagogical Bad

The concept of public goods is confusing because it confounds three analytically distinct concepts: excludability, rivalry, and public finance. Pure public goods are of limited relevance as an explanation of government spending. To make matters worse, the broader policy community uses the term in ways that invoke different means of both public and good than economists favor. For example, global public goods describe everything from the global environment, international financial stability and market efficiency, to health, knowledge, peace and security and humanitarian rights. In this essay, I argue for radically reducing the emphasis placed on public goods in the standard undergraduate public finance curriculum, and instead emphasizing the fundamental underlying issues of exclusion, rivalry, and public finance/provision. The ultimate aim of an undergraduate course in public expenditures should, I argue, be to explain government spending.

Bioprospecting in Antarctica: the search for a policy regime

This paper aims to elucidate the important economic and political aspects of an extremely complex policy issue involving biological prospecting (bioprospecting) in Antarctica. In addressing this rapidly growing global industry, which searches for commercially valuable biological and genetic resources in a world of biological diversity, it becomes obvious that a critical interface exists between Antarctica and the intertwined bioprospecting policies brought forth during recent decades by two treaties, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The analytical framework of the paper builds upon the economic concept of public goods within a political framework of international treaties and law. The concept of a national public good, associated with the sovereignty of a state (nation) over its biological and genetic resources, is the basis of such policy under the Biological Diversity Treaty. In practice, this jurisdiction applies both to the land area of a state and to the exclusive economic zone of a coastal state. The Law of the Sea Treaty, on the other hand, provides both a national public good connotation to exclusive economic zones while creating a global public good connotation for deep seabed mineral resources, with a related potential application to bioprospecting in the deep seabed. While the Antarctic Treaty System possesses several institutions that could be adapted to a bioprospecting policy regime, no such regime has been established up to the present. The paper concludes with a consideration of the critical question: is bioprospecting in Antarctica a national or global public good? While logic would appear to lead one toward the ‘global’ answer, multinational economic and political realities in today's world suggest that either a national public good approach, or a largely unregulated open access approach, is more likely to prevail.

Genomics knowledge and equity: a global public goods perspective of the patent system.

Genomics, the comprehensive examination of an organism's entire set of genes and their interactions, will have a major impact on the way disease is diagnosed, prevented and treated in the new millennium. Despite the tremendous potential it holds for improving global health, genomics challenges policy-makers to ensure that its benefits are harnessed equitably across populations and nations. The classification of genomics as a global public good and the inequity encountered in the development and application of genomics knowledge are outlined in this paper, We examine the effect of the current patent system on the distribution of costs and benefits relating to genomics knowledge between countries of different economic strength. The global public goods concept provides a normative economic rationale for the modification of certain aspects of the current patent system and for the creation of complementary mechanisms to respond to the health needs of low-income and middle-income countries.

Corporate Expansion, Textual Expansion: Commodification Model of Communication

The authors argue that the contemporary situation of media saturation and hypercommercialism calls for an alternative model of communication that accounts for the current political-economic conditions. This study shows how corporate discursive strategies contribute to the expansion of hegemonic corporate interests and how they redefine public communication. The authors analyze two corporate museums, The World of Coca-Cola and the CNN Studio Tour, as discursive spaces (i.e., text). In support of the authors' concerns, they develop the Commodification Model of Communication. This model moves beyond the traditional “four theories of the press” to theorize how the text has expanded to accommodate corporate expansion by equating earlier concepts of public goods and services with private interests. By using the contradictory textual strategies of authority and choice, corporations work to normalize private, profit-oriented communication and thus solve what they pose as a problem, the cacophony of unlicensed public communication.

The impact of cultural economics on economic theory

The paper asks what kind of impact cultural economics has had on the development of economic theory. Six research areas are discussed: productivity differentials between artistic and non-artistic labor, variations of the public good concept, particularly in relation to environmental goods, endogenous changes in preferences, long-term rates of return on paintings, impact of new media technologies and the autonomy of artistic valuation.

Market for ideas and reception of physiocracy in Spain: some analytical and historical suggestions

This essay aims to situate the phenomenon of the international spread of the economic ideas of a particular school of thought within the framework of the ‘market for ideas' approach outlined by George Stigler. On the one hand, the paper attempts to amplify the theoretical model of a demand-driven market for ideas, introducing the concepts of public goods, utility, transaction costs and other institutional variables, and on the other this analytical approach is applied to the Spanish market for ideas of the 18th century and its reception of physiocracy, obtaining a new perspective on the spread of ideas of the iconomistes in comparison with the existing literature.

The Traditional Distinction between Public and Private Goods Needs to Be Expanded, Not Abandoned

Observations that goods and services cannot legitimately be divided into just two categories - private and public - have led to a proposal, published in this journal, that the traditional concept of public goods be abandoned. In this paper it is suggested that the problems of the private versus public dichotomy be solved by expanding the taxonomy, not by abandoning it. Non-rivalry and non-excludability are independent characteristics (i.e. one can exist without the other), and they can be present in varying degrees (i.e. they are not all-or-nothing characteristics). Recognizing this, an expanded taxonomy is constructed which is not subject to the valid criticisms which have been made of the too simple private versus public dichotomy.