This paper discusses a novel approach to elicit people’s preferences for public goods, namely the life satisfaction approach. Reported subjective well-being data are used to directly evaluate utility consequences of public goods. The strengths of this approach are compared to traditional approaches and identification issues are addressed. Moreover, it is applied to estimate utility losses cause...

The theory of public goods would be greatly simplified if it were possible to determine the optimal amount of public goods independently of the distribution of private goods among individuals. Richard Musgrave (1958, 1969) has vigorously argued for treating the allocation and distribution functions of government as distinct. But as Paul Samuelson (1955, 1969) has demonstrated, in general equlib...

This paper explores the feasibility and desirability of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). We identify CSR with creation of public goods or curtailment of public bads. Using a model with pro…tmaximizing …rms, the paper shows that there is a direct parallel between CSR and traditional models of private provision of public goods. Indeed, …rms that use CSR will produce public goods at exactly ...

Empirical observation can confirm that not all rural communities enjoy an optimal level of local public goods: some public goods are provided more often and in a better quality than others. Given the vital importance of public goods for the welfare of local communities (among which the management of the local natural resource base for sustainable development plays a relevant role), the relation...

This paper discusses a novel approach to elicit people’s preferences for public goods, namely the life satisfaction approach. Reported subjective well-being data are used to directly evaluate utility consequences of public goods. The strengths of this approach are compared to traditional approaches and identification issues are addressed. Moreover, it is applied to panel data to estimate utilit...

Abstract: The aim of international economic sanctions is imposing economic restrictions on target countries. In order to decrease the sanctions negative brunt on citizenry and make it ineffective, government may respond to sanctions through policies such as increasing the supply of public goods. This paper studies the regime changes of government expenditures in Iranian economy in response to e...

Background: Explaining public-goods cooperation is a challenge for evolutionary biology. However, cooperation is expected to more readily evolve if it imposes a smaller cost. Such costs of cooperation are expected to decline with increasing resource supply, an ecological parameter that varies widely in nature. We experimentally tested the effect of resource supply on the evolution of cooperatio...

This paper examines whether two regions should remain together within a fiscal federation, or separate, when their inhabitants have different preferences for publicly provided goods. The paper focuses on trade-offs between returns to scale in the provision of the goods, and the scope to tailor provision to the tastes of the inhabitants in each region. A general model is developed that includes,...

The presence of public goods seriously challenges traditional or “natural” solutions for the allocation of private goods. Important policy questions, of whether we can rely on the market to provide optimal amounts of public goods such as air pollution, and how much we can rely on “natural” processes such as voluntary contribution to solve environmental problems, boil down to fundamental issues ...