Tyler Cowen
Quotes From
“Public Goods Definitions and their Institutional Context: A Critique of Public Goods Theory” (1985)
- When most economists discuss the goods that are traditionally labeled ‘public’ (e.g., national defense, roads, etc.) they usually take a very broad definition of the marginal unit. When ‘private’ goods are discussed, institutions are ignored in a similar manner by considering a very small marginal unit.#
“The Costs of Cooperation” (1999)
- A public good for a small group may be a public bad for the larger community, as illustrated by the example of monopolistic cartels. #
- [A norm of] citizen cooperation decreases the cost of supplying public goods through government, but it also decreases the cost of supplying abuse through government. #
- Free market economists typically express confidence in the ability of markets to produce public goods. They cite norms, sanctions, and repeated small group interactions as mechanisms encouraging public goods production. At the same time, free market economists tend to be pessimistic about the stability of cartels in an unregulated market. If markets successfully produce local public goods, however, why are stable cartels not more prevalent? Critics of the market tend to take the contrary positions, leading to tensions in the opposite direction. Left-wing economists doubt the ability of markets to produce public goods, but they also fear that free market cartels possess great stability and power.#
Posts About
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Returns to Scale, Not State Capacity
Liquid markets are the basic prerequisite to industrialization and growth. But where do liquid markets come from? A naïve libertarian might say that markets are self-organizing, and economic growth picked up historically when governments simply stepped out of the way. While there are certainly some respects in which this is true, . . .