Provision Of Public Goods Research Articles

One bad apple spoils the barrel? Public good provision under threshold uncertainty

We report laboratory evidence on the voluntary provision of threshold public goods when the exact location of the threshold is not known. Our experimental treatments explicitly compare two prominent technologies, summation, and weakest link. Uncertainty in threshold location is particularly detrimental to threshold attainment under weakest link, where low contributions by one subject cannot be compensated by others. In contrast, threshold uncertainty does not affect contributions under summation. We demonstrate that non-binding pledges improve the chances of threshold attainment under both technologies, particularly under weakest link.

The Main Theories of the Provision of Public Goods: History and Modernity

The article discusses the history and modern theories of public goods provision, which are a key aspect of the socio-economic system of states. Public goods, such as defense, free education, street lighting, and others, are distinguished by the fact that their consumption is available to all members of society at the same time and they do not compete with each other. It is determined that in the 19th century, with the emergence of new economic and social theories, new approaches to the provision of public goods emerged. Researchers such as Schaeffe and Pigou made a significant contribution to understanding the role of the state in this process by considering public goods in the context of the public and private sectors of the economy. It is noted that in the second half of the 19th century, as well as in the 20th century, new theories emerged that became important for understanding the production and distribution of public goods. The key attention is focused on the study of the history and modernity of theories of public goods provision, as well as their application in modern conditions. In general, the article highlights the significance of the historical development of the theory of public goods and its impact on modern economic and political practice, emphasizing the need for continuous development and adaptation of this theory to the changing conditions of society. A comparative analysis of the scientific literature of different conceptual views and approaches to the problem of public goods provision and their distribution is presented.

The effects of social capital and family income on farmers’ participation in rural public goods provision

Farmers' participation in rural public goods provision (PGP) is vital to improving rural public goods conditions and achieving rural revitalization in China. The factors influencing farmers' participation are, however, far from clear. This paper aims to investigate how social capital and income, the two most prominent factors, affect rural residents' participation in PGP. We use the Heckman sample selection model to empirically estimate the effects of both social capital and family income on farmers' participation and contribution to PGP based on a household survey conducted in four representative provinces in China. We further investigate the moderating effect of village location and elite ability on the effect of social capital on farmers' participation. Our results show that social capital generally has a positive impact on farmers' participation. Specifically, improving the formal norm, size of networks, and density of network would increase farmers' participation propensity. Enriching norms, particularly formal norms, can significantly improve farmers' contribution to public goods. Surprisingly, family income, mainly non-farm income, has a slightly negative effect on farmers' participation. Moreover, village-county distance can undermine the effect of social norms on farmers' participation, while elite ability can enhance the effect of social trust on farmers' participation. Thus, we suggest authorities should focus on enhancing social capital in the rural community to promote farmers’ participation in PGP.

Анализ на нагласите на фермерите за предоставяне на агроекологични обществени блага в България

The following article presents an analysis of various factors and attitudes of farmers in Bulgaria towards the provision of agro-ecological public goods. A survey is being conducted as part of the project “Provision of Agro-Ecological Public Goods in Agriculture by Improving Contractual Relations (PRADO)” 2022 – 2023, led by the Institute of Agrarian Economics in Sofia. In addition, a partial proportional logistic model was used for evaluation purposes as well. The analysis of farmers’ perceptions and willingness to participate in the provision of agri-environmental public goods focuses on four main types of contracts: result-based agreements, collective action initiatives, value chain arrangements, and land tenure agreements. The research findings indicate that several factors, including education level, production of certified organic goods, cultivated area size, discounted land rental, and primary farm activities, have a positive influence on farmers’ inclination to engage in the four types of contracts under analysis.

Towards a new architecture for progressive international capital taxation

The application and operation of the Global Anti-Base Erosion (GloBE) Rules agreed at the OECD and released in December 2021 have both strengths and weaknesses for developing countries. Now is the time to address directly the multilateral institutional "architecture" in relation to international tax negotiations. Despite the current geopolitical tensions, the nature of climate change and increased possibility of future health pandemics have made the need for global public goods provision – and thus global tax coordination – even more necessary. Moreover, the GloBe rules reflect the underrepresentation of non-OECD members in the process of the "Inclusive Framework," as evidenced by their absence in key committee leadership, paucity of specialised delegates and lack of explicit voting rights. Therefore, it is correct to welcome the recent UN resolution to work towards a worldwide Tax Convention.

Vaccination as personal public-good provision

Vaccination against infectious diseases has both private and public benefits. We study whether social preferences – concerns for the well-being of other people – are associated with one’s decision regarding vaccination. We measure these social preferences for 549 online subjects with a public-good game and an altruism game. To the extent that one gets vaccinated out of concern for the health of others, contribution in the public-good game is analogous to an individual’s decision to obtain vaccination, while our altruism game provides a different measure of altruism, equity, and efficiency concerns. We proxy vaccine demand with how quickly a representative individual voluntarily took the initial vaccination for COVID-19 (after the vaccine was widely available). We collect COVID-19 vaccination history separately from the games to avoid experimenter-demand effects. We find a strong result: Contribution in the public-good game is associated with greater demand to voluntarily receive a first dose, and thus also to vaccinate earlier. Compared to a subject who contributes nothing, one who contributes the maximum ($4) is 58% more likely to obtain a first dose voluntarily in the four-month period that we study (April through August 2021). In short, people who are more pro-social are more likely to take a voluntary COVID-19 vaccination. Behavior in our altruism game does not predict vaccination. We recommend further research on the use of pro-social preferences to help motivate individuals to vaccinate for other transmissible diseases, such as the flu and HPV.

Institutionalized governance on organizations via norm‐based policy instrument: Evidence from cleaner production in China

AbstractRegulating organizations to align their private interests with public interests is important, especially for collective action problems in climate and sustainability governance. Whereas these issues are not satisfactorily addressed by conventional regulations, norms are envisioned as a promising alternative. But norm‐based policy instruments are not well understood regarding their scalable effects on substantive organizational actions, given the presence of other regulations. We advance a conceptual framework, accounting for norm‐based interventions' potential effects on organizational actions and their differences from conventional regulations in institutionalized governance. Based on the setting of cleaner production (CP) in China and an event study strategy, we provide empirical evidence consistent with the framework: non‐regulatory, norm‐based interventions led to nation‐wide, significant improvement in plant‐level CP; the effects were stronger via network‐based diffusion and local internalization, weakened by extrinsic motivation from regulations, and associated with managerial conformity, not innovation. We estimate substantive benefits of norms in public goods provision, with the amount of water saved equivalent to the consumption of a water‐scarce province in China. Our findings provide consistent explanations for norm‐based instruments in real governance settings, showing them as a complement to other policies in shaping organizations and guiding proactive transitions to address global challenges.

What does universalism mean in social housing - moral justification of social housing in Finland

This paper is about the justification for social housing and, more broadly, different considerations for universalist provision of public goods. Globally, social housing has undergone a retrenchment phase in recent decades; it has been impacted by the financialisaton of housing and critiques claiming social housing is an inefficient and unfair use of public money. Nevertheless, as examples from Finland show, social housing still has a recognised role as part of welfare state policies. To understand how social housing advocates operate in this strained position, this paper analyses interview data collected from 23 experts in the field of social housing. The analysis—which draws on Boltanski and Thévenot's theory of public justification—shows that social housing officials are consistent in their views, emphasising decommodification of housing and supporting tenants' equal right for home and citizenship. These notes are interpreted through the tradition of the Nordic conception of welfare states. The findings open new opportunities to discuss connections between cultural legacies and divergent considerations for provision of welfare.

Deciding for others: Local public good contributions with intermediaries

Given that pure public goods' broader use is often limited by distance, congestion, or borders, local public goods are prevalent. The decision for the provision of these local public goods is often made by individuals who do not get to consume them. It is, therefore, not clear whether the classic free-riding problem result holds in this framework. We study the provision of a local public good where the public good contribution decisions are made by non-local intermediaries who neither contribute from their own endowment nor directly benefit from the local public good. Each intermediary decides for only one public good beneficiary. Intermediaries make decisions under two compensation mechanisms where their incentives are either non-aligned (fixed), or aligned (variable), with those of the beneficiaries they represent. We find that the use of intermediaries, regardless of the compensation mechanism, significantly increases contributions to the provision of the public good.

Polarizing the Donorate: Charitable Giving and Negative Political Advertisements

ABSTRACT Does inflammatory political rhetoric undermine the voluntary provision of public goods? This paper addresses this question by combining Form 990 data on charitable giving with Wesleyan Media Project data on political advertising and a text-based measure of charity ideology. Attack advertising creates political polarization, which discourages giving to ideological charities, and encourages giving to non-ideological charities. These results suggest that divisive political rhetoric may actually strengthen nonpartisan civil society.

Harmonizing fiscal policy: Indirect taxes and global public goods

AbstractThis article focuses on the welfare effects of the interaction of a rule of indirect tax harmonization under the destination principle and the provision of public goods that are global in nature. It stresses the role of international transfers between governments set in order to equalize the social (i.e., worldwide) marginal cost of public funds across countries. Under this condition, it is shown how the combination of the tax and expenditure side of such a “harmonizing fiscal policy” can give rise to a potential Pareto improvement. This requires considering aggregate revenue effects (and the ensuing effects on the provision of public goods) of the fiscal reform jointly with under/over provision of public goods in the (first‐best) Samuelson sense.

Public good provision and progressive income taxation in a spatial economy

Public good provision and progressive income taxation in a spatial economy

Targeting the centre and (least) poor: Evidence from urban Lahore, Pakistan

Using the case of Pakistan, this article explores the distribution and politics of public goods provision in urban slums. Across slums, we find that public goods are mainly provided to households located in central slums rather than those in the urban periphery. Within slums, we find politicians target spending towards wealthy households but do not go through brokers, unlike the more-studied case of India. Overall, the article shows how electoral incentives in Pakistan are biased against programmatic public goods provision for the urban poor. Our results then point to variation in patronage politics among slums in the Global South.

Global Perspectives on Fiscal Policy and Labor Income-Leisure Choices: Theoretical and Practical Insights

In macroeconomic literature, fiscal policy is considered a powerful tool to achieve sustainable development, full employment, and social well-being in developed and developing societies. For this, public authority uses expansionary and contractionary tax policies to achieve stable growth and employment environment for the stable labor market. This study theoretically and empirically investigates the problem of inference on income-leisure labor preference. Also, it considers the impact of tax and expenditure structure on labor choices regarding working hours under the assumption of neoclassical theory. We use quantile regression analysis to investigate the data set for worldwide, high, and low-income countries from 2000 to 2022, for the macro-level analysis based on the empirical investigation of 123 countries cross-section panel. The outcomes show that when the fiscal authorities impose a regressive form of taxes, it may hurt the labor wages and distribution of income-leisure preferences or the welfare of labor. Similarly, non-labor income hurts labor utility through a large volume of non-development expenditure. However, when the progressive form of taxes is imposed, it may improve the labor utility. At the same time, on the other side, when fiscal authority disburses the development expenditure, it may support the non-labor income through the provision of public goods and services. For practice, the empirical results of quantile regression show that government expenditure has a positive while tax hurts labor supply. Fiscal policy in low-income countries has provided an alternative outcome

Bribes and Bombs: The Effect of Corruption on Terrorism

We leverage plausibly exogenous variation in regional exposure to corruption to provide causal estimates of the impact of local political corruption on terrorist activity for a sample of 175 countries between 1970 and 2018. We find that higher levels of corruption lead to more terrorism. This result is robust to a variety of empirical modifications, including various ways in which we probe the validity of our instrumental variables approach. We also show that corruption adversely affects the provision of public goods and undermines counter-terrorism capacity. Thus, our empirical findings are consistent with predictions from a game-theoretical representation of terrorism, according to which corruption makes terrorism relatively more attractive compared to peaceful contestation, while also decreasing the costs of organizing and carrying out terrorist attacks.

New pathways for improved delivery of public goods from agriculture and forestry

This special issue of Bio-based and Applied Economics (BAE) features a selection of five papers developed within the EU H2020 project ‘CONtract SOLutions for Effective and lasting delivery of agri-environmental-climate public goods by EU agriculture and forestry’ (CONSOLE) (H2020-RUR-2018-2, GA No. 817949). CONSOLE has been comprehensively investigating the effectiveness, efficiency and longevity of innovative contract solutions for the provision of Agri-Environmental Climate Public Goods (AECPGs), the acceptance of such contracts amongst European farmers and stakeholders, as well as the drivers and mechanisms influencing the implementation.

(Successful) Democracies Breed Their Own Support

Abstract Using large-scale survey data covering more than 110 countries and exploiting within-country variation across cohorts and surveys, we show that individuals with longer exposure to democracy display stronger support for democratic institutions, and that this effect is almost entirely driven by exposure to democracies with successful performance in terms of economic growth, control of corruption, peace and political stability, and public goods provision. Across a variety of specifications, estimation methods, and samples, the results are robust, and the timing and nature of the effects are consistent with our interpretation. We also present suggestive evidence that democratic institutions that receive support from their citizens perform better in the face of negative shocks.

Private provision of public goods under price uncertainty: a comment

Private provision of public goods under price uncertainty: a comment

Improving Women’s Representation in Politics through Gender Quotas

Gender quotas for women in local government bodies can improve women’s representation in politics, increase provision of public services, and improve perceptions of women as leaders. Gender quotas are one policy tool designed to increase women’s representation in politics. Women hold fewer than 25 percent of parliamentary seats worldwide, and just 12 percent of the world’s heads of state and government are women. In many countries this imbalance extends to local governments. Countries are taking action In 2013, 118 countries were implementing a form of gender quotas for an elected office. Women's empowerment and their full participation on the basis of equality in all spheres of society, including participation in the decision making process and access to power ,are fund a mental for the achievement to fequality , development and peace. One way to implement gender quotas is by reserving a certain number of leadership positions for women. A review of eleven randomized evaluations in India, Lesotho, and across 28 states in India found that reservation quotas influenced women’s political participation and policy outcomes and increased the provision of public goods aligned with female voters’ preferences. Further, quotas improved men’s perceptions of women as leaders, increased the aspirations of girls, and helped women get elected even after quotas were removed. Most of the rigorous research drawn on in this insight comes from India comparative conclusions should be drawn cautiously. This evidence largely suggests that governments seeking to improve women’s representation in politics should consider reservation quotas for local leadership positions. overview of the three main types of quota policies reserved seats, party quotas, and legislative quotas. These are found in all major world regions in countries with a broad range of institutional, social, economic, and cultural characteristics. At the same time, the mere advent of gender quotas has not resulted in uniform increases in the percentage of women in parliament worldwide some countries have witnessed dramatic increases, while others have seen more modest changes or even setbacks in the number of women elected to national assemblies. Despite the rapid international diffusion of these measures, most research has focused on single countries or, at most, the presence of quotas within one world region. Consequently, explanations for the adoption and impact of gender quotas derived from one study often contradict .

Socioeconomic marginalization and political preferences: evidence from Palestinian Arabs in Israel

AbstractWe examine the relationship between socioeconomic characteristics and voting patterns among Arabs in Israel. We combine panel data on sixty-three Arab localities with election results and socioeconomic indicators for seven election years between 1996 and 2015. Exploiting the variation in political preferences and socioeconomic status across localities and over time, we find that the trends in Arab turnout are consistent with the substantive representation and political exclusion theories: that is, the representation of Arabs in Jewish-majority parties contributed to turnout, while the events of the second Intifada, which included clashes between Arabs in Israel and the Israeli police, were associated with a long-term decline in turnout. We also found that the preference for Arab parties over Left-wing Zionist parties is related to the instrumental voting theory. As the socioeconomic status of Arabs in Israel improved, they were less dependent on Jewish-majority parties for public goods provision and thus had less reason to support them. These findings contribute to understanding the experience of minorities in other contexts and to policymakers in Israel and beyond.