From: Public-private Collaboration

Economists most frequently contribute to public policy analysis through efforts to identify government's proper goals (the domain of welfare economics) and to guide the allocation of resources across, competing claims (the domain of cost­ effectiveness analysis). Yet a complementary and equally important analytic task is to inform the choice and management of means. Once retraining for trade­ displaced workers is identified as a goal that warrants major spending, for example, the analyst's job is by no means done. Should government run training programs itself, contract with a community organization, issue vouchers to displaced workers, or use a tax incentive to induce firms to provide training? What principles tell us whether direct government supply, delegation to private non-profits, or for-profit provision is the best approach to park management, foreign aid, or renal dialysis? Good governance requires choosing the right implementation model as well as the right ends. The richer the repertoire of alternative models, the more important is analytic work to guide the assignment of tasks. As government increasingly shares the collective-action stage with private actors, both for-profit and not-for-profit, addressing this assignment problem-who should do what?-becomes both more complex and more consequential. This chapter examines a particular form of public-private collaboration that we term "collaborative governance;' here defined as: