Does Public Policy Crowd Out Private Contributions to Public Goods

It is sometimes claimed that individuals' contributions topublic goods are not motivated by economic costs and benefitsalone, but that people also have a moral or norm-basedmotivation. A number of studies indicate that such moral ornorm-based motivation might be crowded out, or crowded in, bypublic policy. This paper discusses some models that can yieldinsight into the interplay between economic and moral ornorm-based motivation for voluntary contributions to publicgoods, and compares their policy implications. We distinguishbetween five types of models: Altruism models, social normmodels, fairness models, models of commitment and thecognitive evaluation theory.     

行政裁量控制中的裁量基准和公众参与

行政裁量在行政管理领域中被广泛地采用,没有行政裁量就没有行政管理。行政裁量权的合理运行,可以起到维护公共利益和公共秩序,提高行政效率的重要作用。为了规范行政裁量权的行使,确有必要通过裁量控制中的公众参与的三大程序制度对它加以控制。     

公共产品的生产效率探析

公共产品的生产效率问题,从本质上看,是政府如何对生产机构进行选择和监督的问题,其结果取决于进行公共产品生产的具体组织方式特点。公共产品生产组织方式主要有国有机构垄断生产、私人机构垄断生产和竞争生产三种类型组合。垄断条件下私人机构的生产效率高于国有机构,竞争条件下的生产效率高于垄断,且在竞争条件下国有机构可能达到与私人机构同样的效率水平。从理论上对影响公共产品生产效率的各类因素进行分析和总结,是提高公共产品生产效率的现实选择。     

Funding Global Public Goods: The Dark Side of Multilateralism

The funding of global public goods, such as climate mitigation, presents a complex strategic problem. Potential recipients demand side payments for implementing projects that furnish global public goods, and donors can cooperate to provide the funding. We offer a game‐theoretic analysis of this problem. In our model, a recipient demands project funding. Donors can form a multilateral program to jointly fund the project. If no program is formed, bilateral funding remains a possibility. We find that donors rely on multilateralism if their preferences are relatively symmetric and domestic political constraints on funding are lax. In this case, the recipient secures large rents from project implementation. Thus, even donors with strong interests in global public good provision have incentives to oppose institutional arrangements that promote multilateral funding. These incentives have played an important role in multilateral negotiations on climate finance, especially in Cancun (2010) and Durban (2011).     

社区公共物品与社区治理--论城市社区"四轮驱动、一辕协调"的治理结构

城市社区日益成为社会公共物品供给与消费的基本单元.然而,在既有的政府垄断性供给体系下,社区普遍存在公共物品供给短缺.改革传统的管理与服务方式,建立新的公共物品供给体系,满足社区不断增长的需求,已成为城市社区建设的中心任务.在众多的创新实践中,"社区治理"不失为一种可行的思路.本文遵循社区治理的理念,尝试将其深化并落实到体制层面,提出"四轮驱动、一辕协调"的社区治理结构与运作模式,并建议首先在"危改回迁社区"中试点.     

Segregation and Inequality in Public Goods

Many U.S. cities function without regular problems. They have well‐kept roads, sewers that never overflow, and public parks with swing sets and restrooms. Others struggle to maintain balanced budgets, fail to adequately equip or staff their police forces, and offer little assistance to residents of limited means. What explains these differences? I argue that segregation along racial lines contributes to public goods inequalities. Racially segregated cities are also politically polarized cities, making collective investment more challenging and public goods expenditures lower. I provide evidence for this argument using election data from 25 large cities and demographic data matched to city finances in more than 2,600 places. To handle the problem of endogeneity, I instrument for segregation using the number of waterways in a city. I find that segregated municipalities are more politically polarized and spend less on a wide range of public goods.     

Pumpkin Pies and Public Goods: The Raffle Fundraising Strategy

Charitable organizations, such as schools and churches, oftenuse raffles to raise money. This article explores the economicincentives inherent in raffle fundraisers. Raffling off aprize is compared to simply asking for voluntary contributions(i.e., a raffle without a prize). Even if every contributor isrisk-averse, offering a prize can increase contributions to apublic good by more than the value of the prize. Thus, tyingcontributions to a raffle can increase the equilibrium supplyof a public good. Moreover, there exists a raffle prize thatmaximizes the supply of public good over other prizes.     

公共物品非营利组织提供的可行性研究

公共物品领域存在的单一政府提供的状况，带来了公共物品生产的低效和短缺。打破公共物品政府提供的垄断局面，是政府改革的重要内容。非营利组织所具有的“非营利性、自治性、志愿性”等特征，使得它在克服公共物品领域存在的市场失灵和政府失败方面，具有不可替代的积极意义。     

村庄公共品供给中的“好混混”

1990年代以后,两湖平原村庄中出现了好混混。好混混的出现源于村庄公共品供给的困境。乡村组织难以抑制公共品供给中的搭便车行为,村庄公共品合作常常因此难以达成。好混混则可以依靠暴力和暴力威胁遏制搭便车行为,维系村庄公共品合作和供给,他们的好由此体现出来。取消农业税后,乡村组织的公共品供给能力更加弱化,农民因此对好混混的需求更甚。好混混这一怪异现象,反映了国家权力在基层社会存在局部不足。     

Elections, Referendums, and Public Goods

In this article the question of misrepresentation of preferences on the part of politicians is discussed. Some examples of such misrepresentation are given, and it is asked whether the effect was counterproductive or not for the party concerned. The effect on society as a whole is touched upon briefly in the final section.     

Public Goods Theory from Eighteenth Century Political Philosophy to Twentieth Century Economics

Some scholars have studiedMancur Olson's legacy by investigating theeffects of his research on the socialsciences (McLean, 2000). Others havescrutinized the logical and empiricalimplications of his theories (Sandler,1992; Marsh, 1976; Chamberlin, 1974;Frohlich and Oppenheimer, 1970). A thirdgroup have quietly claimed that hisgreatest work, The logic of collectiveaction, was little more than apopularization of earlier ideas (Dowding,1997; Chamberlain, 1966). This paperattempts to exonerate Olson of the latterclaim by reviewing the major contributionsto collective action theory before his timeand comparing them to The logic ofcollective action.     

Political Equilibrium and the Provision of Public Goods

This paper treats interest groups – peoplein their role as consumers of a public goodand people in their role as taxpayers – asthe unit of account for representativevoting. Each group is allowed to make aneffort to support its preferred candidateand, at the margin, the effort-benefitratio is the political price the group iswilling to pay to secure an additionaldollar of benefits.

Under reasonable assumptions, a uniqueequilibrium is assured and itscharacteristics are quite intuitive. Inparticular, the marginal political benefit(from consumers) of the last unit of outputmust equal the marginal political cost(from taxpayers). Alternatively, the rateat which the politician can transformtaxpayer income into consumer surplus mustequal the ratio of their political prices. The result will be optimal only on the rareoccasion when the effort-benefit ratios ofthe two groups are equal.

Since political goals are themselves ``public goods'' for thetwo interest groups,they face all the normal free riderproblems. Moreover, even small differencesin the effort-benefit ratios of the twogroups lead to large welfare losses.

How bad can things get? Each group has anincentive to try to overcome free-riderproblems and divert resources from privatesector activities to politics. And anyincrease in political effort is alwaysrewarded. However, (1) the marginal returnis always higher for the group with thesmaller effort-benefit ratio; (2) thedifferential return between the two groupsgrows the further we stray from optimality;and (3) both groups face diminishingreturns. These incentives may act asnatural checks on political outcomes –placing some limit on the amount of wasteand inefficiency democracy is likely toproduce.

The influence of a producer (of the publicgood) group that collects a rent increasesthe likelihood that public goods will beoverproduced. In fact, it is conceivableto have a good with no value to consumersproduced, solely because of the influenceof producers. Comparative static analysisreveal that the political system willrespond to changes in market conditions ina way similar to economic markets. Themagnitude of these shifts differs fromeconomic markets, however. For goods thatare being overproduced, the politicalmarketplace overresponds to changes indemand and underresponds to changes incosts. The converse is true for goods thatare being underproduced.

     

政府在农村公共物品供给中的理念创新

农村公共物品的有效供给是确保社会主义新农村建设进程和质量的决定性因素,政府作为推动新农村建设的主导力量,在农村公共物品供给中应该打破固有的观念束缚,用先进的理念来指导农村公共物品的有效供给,通过树立公共性理念、服务多元化理念、社会公正理念、民主正义理念、法治理念和追求效能理念,把政府对农村公共物品的供给提高到体现政府责任、实现社会公正和凸现价值正义上来。     

农村公共产品的有效供给与政府职能转变

农村公共产品是具有非竞争性和非排他性、用于满足农村公共需要的产品。现阶段,我国农村公共产品供给的现状不容乐观,存在着供给总量不足、供给结构失调、供给机制有失公平和供给监督管理体制缺失等问题。本文在分析农村公共产品供给不足的症结———政府职能的“错位”、“缺位”和“越位”的基础上,提出了转变政府职能,确保农村公共产品的有效供给的对策和措施。     

第三部门与公共物品供给：方式选择及政府作用

福利经济学主流观点认为公共物品只能由政府供给。事实上,在众多市场经济国家,第三部门在公共物品的供给中发挥着重要作用。由于政府、市场、第三部门各有优势和劣势,西方国家第三部门在提供公共物品的实践中形成了取长补短、相互合作的方式。政府在其中起着掌舵和催化剂的作用。目前,中国第三部门在提供公共物品的过程中更多地体现出政府的依附性,这是由转型期社会特点和政府管理体制决定的。政府的任务应当是加快自身职能转变和提供有利的制度环境,切实发挥第三部门在供给公共物品中的作用,将对加入WTO后中加政府的治道变革产生积极影响。     

合伙人信义义务问题探讨

合伙关系中合伙人的信义义务源于合伙人之间因信任和合伙协议建立的信义关系,是由诚实信用原则衍生出来的一项义务.合伙人信义义务的具体形态因合伙人在不同合伙中所处的地位不同而不同.我国"新合伙法"关于合伙人信义义务的规定存在诸多不足,为此,应采取完善合伙组织形式、重构合伙关系中合伙人的信义义务体系和确立合伙人违反信义义务的法律责任等措施来加以完善.     

公共性、公共物品和自利性的概念辨析

公共性、公共物品和自利性等概念是公共行政学和公共管理学中的基本范畴。在现实的社会生活中,公共性、公共物品和自利性等问题都是历史地生成的,是在公私领域、公私部门分化分立的过程中被提出来的。所以,这些概念仅仅适用于对近代社会的分析。公共性是指公共部门、政府的属性;公共物品是由公共部门、政府提供给社会的具有公共性的物品;自利性的概念则是指人的行为动机,至于组织机构和部门则不存在着自利性的问题。     

Social Heterogeneity and Optimal Mix Between Public and Private Provision of Public Goods

With a framework of incomplete contract, this paper shows that for provision of public goods such as medicare and education, pure privatization may not promote competition. On the contrary, the co-existence of public and private provision may enhance de facto competition. Two competitive effects are identified. When consumers are heterogeneous, the co-existence of public and private ownership gives consumers freedom to choose from different ownership, improving allocation efficiency (Tiebout effect). While consumers are homogeneous, the co-existence can promote yardstick competition, squeezing out information rents from both ownerships, improving production efficiency (benchmarking effect). In either case, the co-existence dominates unique ownership. The paper ends up with some implications for China.s medicare and education reforms. Yongqin Wang is an assistant professor at China Center for Economic Studies, Fudan University and Haibo Xu is a M.A. student in economics at the same center. We thank Te Bao, Zhao Chen, Sujian Guo, Ming Lu, Yew-Kwang Ng and Teague Savitch, and anonymous reviewers for valuable comments.     

过渡型社区公共产品政府供给问题研究

过渡型社区是我国城市化的产物,也是一种较为特殊的社区类型。公共产品是社区的组成元素,关乎居民日常的生产、生活能否顺利开展。政府供给是过渡型社区公共产品供给中最常见的一种,起着举足轻重的作用。但是,目前在过渡型社区中,政府供给还存在着诸多问题亟待解决。因此,需要对这些问题进行分析和解决,进而完善政府供给,提升过渡型社区公共产品的实际供给效果,最终实现进一步提高社区居民生活品质以及过渡型社区的"顺利"过渡。