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Informed consent, which is primarily aimed at encouraging individual patients and subjects of scientific research to make autonomous decisions, and public health measures, such as compulsory vaccination against infectious diseases, the successfulness of which implies harmonized administration of vaccines to a broad population, seem to be irreconcilable opposites at first glance. This paper deals with investigating whether these opposites can reconcile or whether informed consent can be applied in the field of public health. The first part of the paper provides a short overview of the main features of informed consent and its relevance in treating individual patients. The second part of the paper tackles the issue of immunization. If not provided with consent of their patients or having a legal obligation, physicians are believed to interfere with the bodily integrity of other people when conducting vaccination and their act can be deemed as an assault and entail non-pecuniary damage compensation. Herd immunity as a “public good” can only be achieved if all people are equally subject to public health measures. At this point, the key question is if informed consent and appertaining freedom of decision-making represent a threat to the accomplishment of this public health goal. This question should truly be answered since vaccination may, though rarely, bring to medical complications, which may then lead to high treatment costs, loss of income and extremely rare, to death. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that disclosure of the risks and benefits of immunization within the framework of public health programmes could contribute to putting the fundamental bioethical postulates into practice: establishing and fostering mutual trust between physicians and their patients, which can, in the end, contribute to a higher immunization rate of a population., Informirani pristanak, koji prvenstveno ima za cilj potaknuti pojedine pacijente i subjekte znanstvenog istraživanja na donošenje autonomnih odluka, i javnozdravstvene mjere poput obveznog cijepljenja protiv zaraznih bolesti, čija uspješnost podrazumijeva usklađenu distribuciju cjepiva široj populaciji, čine se na prvi pogled kao nepomirljive suprotnosti. Rad istražuje mogu li se te suprotnosti pomiriti, tj. može li se informirani pristanak primijeniti u području javnog zdravstva. U prvom dijelu rada daje se kratak pregled glavnih značajki informiranog pristanka i njegove važnosti u liječenju pacijenata. Drugi dio rada bavi se pitanjem imunizacije. Ako nemaju pristanak pacijenata i ne postoji zakonska obveza cijepljenja, smatra se da liječnici prilikom cijepljenja zadiru u tjelesni integritet drugih osoba te se njihov čin može smatrati napadom i povlačiti naknadu nematerijalne štete. Imunitet krda kao “javno dobro” može se postići samo ako svi ljudi podjednako podliježu javnozdravstvenim mjerama. U ovom trenutku, ključno je pitanje predstavljaju li informirani pristanak i pripadajuća sloboda odlučivanja prijetnju ostvarivanju ovog javnozdravstvenog cilja. Na ovo pitanje doista treba odgovoriti jer cijepljenje može, iako rijetko, dovesti do medicinskih komplikacija, koje potom mogu dovesti do visokih troškova liječenja, gubitka prihoda i, iznimno rijetko, do smrti. Svrha ovog rada je pokazati da bi otkrivanje rizika i dobrobiti imunizacije u okviru javnozdravstvenih programa moglo pridonijeti provođenju temeljnih bioetičkih postulata u praksi: uspostavljanju i njegovanju međusobnog povjerenja između liječnika i pacijenata, što sve može pridonijeti višoj stopi procijepljenosti stanovništva.

Does increased partisanship undermine the ability of politically heterogeneous groups to function and cooperate in apolitical settings? On the eve of the 2020 U.S. elections, we conducted an online experiment in which Democrats and Republicans played repeated public goods games, both with and without punishment. Absent punishment, mixed party groups are less cooperative and efficient than homogeneous groups. However, polarized groups do no worse than those in which political affiliations are unknown. We find no differences in cooperation across groups that are able to punish free-riding behavior. Thus, knowing that one is in a group with likeminded individuals can serve as a substitute for an enforcement mechanism, but polarized groups can, at some efficiency cost, achieve similar contributions when sanctions are possible.

A corrupção tem sido objeto de estudo em diversas pesquisas, mas apenas recentemente tem sido investigada experimentalmente. Uma maneira de estudar tal fenómeno é expor os participantes a um Jogo dos Bens Públicos (JBP) no qual eles precisam contribuir para produzir um bem público específico, e então precisam tomar decisões sobre como tal bem seria distribuído entre os demais participantes. Um participante que fizer distribuições desiguais beneficiando a si estaría se comportando de maneira análoga ao que é descrito pelo crime de peculato. O objetivo do presente estudo foi investigar como os participantes distribuiram recursos públicos no JBP. Seis participantes foram expostos ao procedimento. Cinco deles fizeram distribuições desiguais, isto é, alocaram a maior parte dos recursos para si mesmo. A partir destes resultados, sugerimos mudanças nas contingencias que controlam a ocorrência deste tipo de comportamento.

As Mancur Olson pointed out in his 1965 book, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, one of the great puzzles of social dynamics is how people overcome collective action problems and organize to pursue common goals. What conditions facilitate and which hinder the emergence of social movements, what allows social movements to persist over time, and what accounts for their impact on social and political dynamics are some of the key questions that scholars have explored over the last few decades. Keywords: collective behavior; political sociology; conflict; Eastern Europe; Middle and Near East

This paper considers one altruistic developed country and several heterogeneous developing countries. We demonstrate that the lack of coordination between countries in tackling climate change finds an optimal solution if developing countries can expect to receive development aid transfers from the developed country. The mechanism requires a sufficiently high level of altruism and specific timing, but a global coalition is not necessary. We also show that the developed country may democratically assign a delegate who is more altruistic than its median voter in order to benefit from the efficiency gain generated by positive development aid transfers., Environmental and Resource Economics, 84 (1), ISSN:0924-6460, ISSN:1573-1502

The impact of performance pay in institutions with multiple goals depends on complementarities in the disutility cost of effort and how different tasks interact to achieve each goal. Workers of a mission-oriented nonprofit were randomly assigned to one of two bonus schemes, each incentivizing one of its two main operational goals: the performance of its microcredit program and the strengthening of community institutions of the poor. This study finds that the credit bonus improved credit-related outcomes but it undermined the social outcome. In contrast, the social bonus advanced the social mission as well as the microcredit program, but only for employees working alone, undermining the performance of employees working in teams. These results cannot be explained by a standard multitask principal-agent model featuring only complementarities in the disutility cost of effort. Instead, they suggest that production complementarities are also relevant.

Most criminal defendants cannot afford to hire an attorney. To provide constitutionally mandated legal services, states commonly use either private court-appointed attorneys or a public defender organization. This paper investigates the relative efficacy of these two modes of indigent defense by comparing outcomes of codefendants assigned to different types of attorneys within the same case. Using data from San Francisco, I show that in multiple defendant cases, public defender assignment is plausibly as good as random. I find that public defenders reduce the probability of any prison sentence by 22% and the length of prison sentences by 10%.

This paper examines the commodification process initiated through a series of state-led programs and questions the sustainable public goods provision in rural China. We challenge the unilateral understanding of spontaneous commodification by the profit-seeking community, and argue that the influence exerted by the Chinese government cannot be ignored. It is found that a preliminary partnership among the state, private investors and villagers was formed to create a hot-spring village called Tangjiajia in suburban Nanjing. The reconstruction was the result of a state-led renovation of the built environment, but it also catalyzed villager entrepreneurship and boosted community consensus. Regarding the public goods provision, stakeholders in the village now enjoy high-quality facilities and services provided by the government for free but have failed to foster reciprocal cooperation to replenish the subtractability of the rural commons. We claim that state intervention is temporal but not a cure-all. A pricing mechanism for the sustainable delivery of public goods is urgently needed in the community. The state-led commodification has undermined the previous low-level equilibrium of rural governance. From the stance of rural sustainability, only self-organization of the rural community can solve the dilemma.

When and how do governments deliver public goods and services in response to citizen preferences? We review the current literature on government responsiveness, with a focus on public goods and service delivery in developing countries. We identify three types of actors that are commonly present in these accounts: politicians, bureaucrats, and citizens. Much of this literature examines interactions between dyads of these actors. The study of electoral accountability and constituency services emphasizes relationships between citizens (or voters) and politicians. Studies of bureaucratic incentives and political oversight of bureaucrats emphasize interactions between politicians and bureaucrats. Finally, studies of bureaucratic embeddedness and citizen oversight of bureaucrats elaborate the interactions between bureaucrats and citizens. We argue that an emerging literature that considers interactions between all three types of actors provides rich theoretical and empirical terrain for developing our understanding of responsiveness and accountability in low- and middle-income countries and beyond.

Problem definition: Congestion pricing offers an appealing solution to urban parking problems—charging varying rates across time and space as a function of congestion may shift demand and improve allocation of limited resources. It aims to increase the accessibility of highly desired public goods and to reduce traffic caused by drivers who search for available parking spaces. At the same time, complex policies make it harder for consumers to make search-based decisions. We investigate the effect of congestion pricing on consumer and social welfare. Academic/practical relevance: This paper contributes to the theory and practice of the management of scarce resources in the public sector, where welfare is of particular interest. Methodologically, we contribute to the literature on structural estimation of dynamic spatial search models. Methodology: Using data from the City of San Francisco, both before and after the implementation of a congestion-pricing parking program, SFpark, we estimate the welfare implications of the policy. We use a dynamic spatial search model to structurally estimate consumers’ search costs, distance disutilities, price sensitivities, and trip valuations. Results: We find that congestion pricing increases consumer and social welfare by more than 4% and reduces search traffic by more than 10% in congested regions compared with fixed pricing. However, congestion pricing may hurt welfare in uncongested regions, in which the focus should be on increasing utilization. Moreover, an unnecessarily complex congestion-pricing scheme makes it difficult for consumers to make search-based decisions. We find that a simpler pricing policy may yield higher welfare than a complex one. Lastly, compared with a policy that imposes limits on parking durations, congestion pricing increases social welfare by allocating the scarce resource to consumers who value it most. Managerial implications: The insights from SFpark offer important implications for local governments that consider alternatives for managing parking and congestion and for public-sector managers who evaluate the tradeoffs between approaches to manage public resources.

Being a teacher educator (TE) of today is often described as a complex task. TEs have to deal with internal demands from students, colleagues and leaders and with external demands from state authorities when shaping the education programme in which they teach. The present article focuses on TEs in Swedish preschool teacher education and aims to explore how commitment to and demands, inside and outside the higher education system, are handled and reflected upon, specifically the demands on considering student-centred learning. Results from interviews with 10 TEs show a perceived lack of support from the faculty board and its office and how colleagues contribute to tensions but also are perceived as supportive colleagues to learn from. Results also show the TEs’ efforts to overcome less desirable traditions. The combined results show how TEs are part of webs of commitments regarded as related fields and threads dependent on each other rather than separate parts, making the web/teacher education programme fragile. If any part breaks, the whole programme will be damaged. The discussion relates to how to overcome traditions and making actors in the programme shape a future-directed good education together.

Problem setting. The current stage of social development poses on a global scale of countries tasks and requirements concerning public administration systems’ construction taking into account basic principles of democracy, onward movement, balance, sustainable development. A new space of social interaction is being formed, which is characterized by fundamentally different peculiarities, while changing the traditional social roles of modern society and its individuals. Our state also needs an open and transparent governance that can face the new contemporary challenges and requirements, where digital technologies can substantially stimulate development of the transparent information society as one of the essential factors of Ukrainian democracy progress, increase of productivity, economic growth, job creation as well as appearance of new forms of solidarity, partnership and cooperation, significant increase of life quality of the whole society and its individuals.Recent research and publications analysis. In the modern scientific literature on the subject of our study there is a number of publications that to some extent respond to the demand of research raised. In consideration of the appearance of new research areas as well as attempts to characterize current trends in social development in terms of new technologies’ usage in the field of public administration the researches of recent years are worthy of notice. Thus, the publications of R. Vlasenko, O. Kolomytseva and I. Shevchuk, O. Orlov, O. Orlov and A. Serenok, O. Pizhuk, L. Samoilenko, V. Chekina and S. Kniaziev, I. Shkyrta and V. Lazar are devoted to certain issues related to our study, on the main results of which we relied in its conducting.Highlighting previously unsettled parts of the general problem. The Ukrainian Government has determined a new main direction for further development of Ukrainian society; it made a decision on general digitalization, digital transformation, introduction of the latest achievements in the field of information and telecommunications technologies in all spheres of life, which begin to play a top-ranked role and transform into a key factor affecting almost all social processes – from daily to global. In view of the aforesaid the study of state support for organization and implementation of relevant arrangements is of great relevance, because countries that do not focus enough attention on this issue, risk losing their positions not only in the IT sphere, but also in others – economic, financial, humanitarian, etc.Paper main body. Over the past few years emerged a global trend, the impact of which on public administration is currently not very noticeable, but in a few years it can become a determining factor in operations with data in political and social spheres. The matter concerns shifting the emphasis towards Big Data analysis technologies’ usage, which became widespread mainly in commercial and private spheres.Nowadays the usage of new technologies to achieve the public good is a global trend that gives impressive results, because in forming of Big Data content are involved all participants of public-civil interaction actualizing in that way potential areas of its usage, among which, in particular: tracking the dynamics of public opinions’ change on the effectiveness of public authorities’ activities, forecasting, elaboration, appropriate decision-making on further socio-economic development of certain territories and assessing their effectiveness and efficiency, analysis of changes in audience mood and response to published information about public authorities’ activities and implemented administrative decisions, identification of basic needs, requests and pursuits of inhabitants of the certain territory, identification of the main problem issues requiring urgent solutions, etc.Already now the work is under way at the state level on the wider usage of modern e-governance tools, including automation of data bulk processing and information-analytical support of administrative decisions, optimization and automation of administrative processes, implementation of electronic interaction forms. The main task to ensure the development of e-governance in the basic fields of Ukraine is implementation of information and telecommunication systems of decision-making support and automation of administrative processes (including usage of prospective geographic information technologies, Internet of Things, Big Data processing technologies and Blockchain).Therefore now when public authorities have an opportunity not only to collect but also to analyze and manage Big Data, they have received a powerful tool for its effective usage to construct a safer society, to improve and optimize its administrative functions, to forecast and reduce the government spending, etc.Conclusions of the research and prospects for further studies. Thus, the benefits of Big Data usage in public authorities are obvious. They allow to reveal hidden patterns that are invisible to human perception. And this provides good opportunities for optimization of all spheres of human life: public and municipal government in general, medicine, security, finance, transport, education and more. Therefore, further research on the analysis of implementation and usage of specific e-governance tools in the basic fields of Ukraine concerning decision-making support and automation of administrative processes seem to be very promising.

Brexit repatriates agriculture policy and subsidies after over 40 years of determination by the European Commission. The paper starts by describing the baseline at Brexit, noting the relatively small economic contribution, the problems of competitiveness given the UK’s geology and geography, and the poor environmental outcomes. The scope for improvement is correspondingly large, and in particular through the impacts of the new agricultural policy based upon public money for public goods and for England, the Environmental Land Management Schemes. Larger and more long-term impacts will come through new trade agreements, through new technologies, including digitalization, robotics, and genetics, and through carbon farming and offsets. Finally, the paper sets out a framework for a future assessment of the impact of Brexit.

From the democratic peace to the authoritarian peace to the conflict prone behavior of emocratizing states, empirical evidence shows that regime types influence the decision to use military force. The only way distinct regimes can behave differently in similar circumstances is if they have different tastes for settlements. Moreover, dyadic negotiation is dependent on the regime types of both participants. Here we offer a dyadic theory of conflict where states bargain over a good with different attributes: a public good element and an element of private goods like rents. We show that dyad type has important effects on the potential for conflict. Empirically, we show our new predictions about the dependence of conflict on dyad type – namely, the presence of private goods in a international crisis increases the likelihood of violence when both sides are autocratic, but decreases it when one side is sufficiently democratic.

We state and analyze a non-cooperative approach to the provision of public goods where agents decide simultaneously not only their private contribution but also their level of utilization which may differ among consumers (contributors and non-contributors). We show that the distribution of intensities of use matters and allows us to deepen the analysis of altruistic behaviors, neutrality results, congestions issues, and further externalities captured within our framework.

Entrepreneurship is routinely promoted as a solution to our most pressing societal and environmental challenges, a means to address issues ranging from poverty to human-induced climate change. Two ...

Two types of social policy instruments — making group behavior public to the individual and making individual behavior public to the group — are used by charities to encourage giving and by policymakers to incentivize other prosocial behaviors. However, models of social norms suggest that the effects of such interventions are theoretically ambiguous and may even backfire in low-compliance environments. We examine these questions in the context of a public good game. Exploiting a unique experimental design, we show that initial contributors' giving decisions are sensitive to the behavior of the group while initial non-contributors' decisions are not. In contrast, making own behavior public to the group increases contributions for all group types, even those comprised entirely of initial non-contributors. These findings suggest that publicizing contributions causes individuals to respond to a common understanding of prosocial behavior that is not defined solely by the initial group norm.

Power indices are methods for numerical evaluation of players’ voting power in simple (voting) games. We present alternative characterizations of the well-known Holler–Packel index, also known as the Public Good Index. To achieve this, we replace the Null Player Property, Anonymity and the Mergeability Condition with two new axioms. These axioms are based on the merging operation and the new arrival property.

Experimental studies of social dilemmas have shown that while the existence of a sanctioning institution improves cooperation within groups, it also has a detrimental impact on group earnings in the short-run. Could the introduction of pre-play threats to punish have enough of a beneficial impact on cooperation, while not incurring the cost associated with actual punishment, so that they increase overall welfare ? We report an experiment in which players can issue non-binding threats to punish others based on their contribution levels to a public good. After observing others' actual contributions, they choose their actual punishment level. We find that threats increase the level of contributions significantly. Efficiency is improved, but only in the long run. However, the possibility of sanctioning differences between threatened and actual punishment leads to lower threats, cooperation and welfare, restoring them to levels equal to or below the levels attained in the absence of threats.

Despite the efforts to reduce poverty in rural municipalities income inequality persists in Mexico. This study presents an analysis on rural household income distribution in the country, since it is argued that conditional federal transfers fail on improving income distribution among rural households. The hypothesis stated that, because of local public goods are also part of individual budget constraints, it is rational to think that an expansion in the provision of local public goods will increase total income and, if such public goods are financed with conditional grants that target low-income groups, it is expected that income inequality may decrease. Thus, the objective was to classify rural municipalities in order to observe which among them have benefited from federal grants and those that did not, finding the reasons why assuming grants are accepted as an instrument contributing to reduce poverty and income inequality in recent years. Each group was analysed as a cluster to observe the effect of federal transfers on rural household income distribution. Main results showed that municipalities with rural low income-inequality and better economic development indicators improve income distribution when obtaining unconditional grants. This means that, in such cases, those transfers designed to reduce poverty also reduce rural income inequality. But that was not the case for the high income-inequality groups, where conditional grants did not have any effect on inequality and, in some cases, inequality increased. For the rural high income-inequality group, unconditional grants showed not to have a positive effect on reducing inequality. The clustering and regression analyses revealed large heterogeneity in the rural areas in terms of income and economic development.

Este artículo aborda sucintamente una evolución del derecho de propiedad y de los bienes públicos en las constituciones de Chile, así como el surgimiento de la función social. Además, aborda los tipos de bienes privados y públicos, tipos de propiedad y los términos teórico-prácticos de esta cuestión. Por otra parte, este trabajo define el dominio público, sus características y el régimen de permisos y concesiones que permite la explotación privada de los bienes públicos. Finalmente se enfoca la cuestión prospectivamente en el marco del debate constituyente en torno a la nueva Constitución que Chile aprobará en el año 2022. Para los autores, el poder constituyente originario desatado en noviembre de 2019 permite un amplio abanico de reconfiguración del derecho de propiedad y de los bienes públicos; subordinando la propiedad y los bienes privados al interés general de la nación.

The premier data on leader survival focus on the violent, dramatic means by which leaders ‘exit’ office. This information, vital for many research questions, constitutes a valuable public good for the community. Yet, it provides an incomplete picture of the political rise and fall of world leaders. The burgeoning study of leaders using survival analysis requires a fine-grained understanding of not just when, but why and how leaders lose power. We cannot, for example, conclude that a leader’s exit implies a successful application of international pressure if her removal stems from pre-set constitutional laws and the immediate successor has long been considered the heir apparent. The Regular Turnover Details dataset remedies this problem. Two principal variables report information about the manner of each leader’s exit and the relationship between outgoing and incoming leaders, allowing analysts to arbitrate between exits that suggest political failure and those that don’t, identify non-political leaders (such as interim and technocratic executives), and determine whether leaders constitute heirs to power or challengers thereto.

Scholars and practitioners of public administration often discuss the core values of the field. Referred to as the pillars of public administration, economy, efficiency, effectiveness and equity ha...

PurposeRecently, multidimensional aspects of poverty has been increasingly focused on which includes education, economy and health, while access to modern energy such as stable electricity is also one of the possible solution; thus, this article aims to divulge the relation between access to electricity and progression in socioeconomic status in urban and rural areas of Nigeria in an attempt to propose a sustainable framework for access to electricity.Design/methodology/approachDemographic and health survey data are collected using four categories of model of questionnaires. A standard questionnaire was designed to gather information on features of the household's dwelling element and attributes of visitors and usual residents between the 2018 period. Biomarker questionnaire was used to gather biomarker data on men, women and children. Logistic model estimation technique was employed to estimate the socioeconomic factors affecting access to electricity in Nigeria.FindingsThese studies discovered that there are diverse set of factors affecting access to electricity in Nigeria especially in the rural areas. However, respondent residing in rural areas are still largely deprived access to electricity; most importantly, households with no access to electricity are more likely to use self-generating sets as revealed. Additionally, empirical findings indicated that the higher the level of your education and wealth, the higher the likelihood of having access to electricity in Nigeria. These factors included political will to connect the rural areas to the national grid, development of other infrastructures in those deprived areas and others.Practical implicationsThe problem confronting access to electricity in Nigeria has three components. The first is the significance of those deprived access to electricity in the rural areas and the physical resources needed to connect them to the national grid. The second is the political willingness of the government to have equitable distribution of public goods evenly between rural and urban areas especially on electricity access which will go a long way in reducing poverty in Nigeria. The third is lack of robust national development plans and strategy to tackle the problems facing electricity access in Nigeria.Social implicationsAs the rate of socioeconomic status/development increases, access to electricity is anticipated to rise up in Nigeria.Originality/valueThe findings can be used by the policy makers to address problems facing access to electricity in Nigeria.

Analyzing the nature of governance of early states and cities is a major challenge for archaeology today. Blanton and Fargher’s (Blanton and Fargher, 2008) influential model of early state governance has proven difficult to operationalize using archaeological data. In this paper, we explore a possible material correlate of collective and autocratic governance: the amount of formal open space in a capital city. We use a sample of premodern Mesoamerican cities to evaluate whether or not these spaces functioned as public goods provided by collective governments. Our assumption is that a positive relationship between the amount of public space and the size of cities indicates that plazas functioned as public goods. In our sample of Mesoamerican cities, we find that the plaza-city size relationship does indeed imply that plazas were public goods. This finding is inconsistent with prior analysis of an expanded cross-cultural sample where no such relationship existed, suggesting that the relationship between the formal public space and the form of governance may be culturally specific to Mesoamerica. These results reflect the complexity of the dynamics of early cities and their governance and suggest that the classification of public goods must be attentive to cross-cultural variation.

We examine the effects of real-time pricing on welfare and consumer surplus in electricity markets. We model consumers on real-time pricing who purchase electricity on the wholesale market. A second group of consumers contracts with retailers and pays time-invariant retail prices. Electricity generating firms compete in supply functions. Increasing the number of consumers on real-time pricing increases welfare and consumer surplus of both types of consumers. Yet, risk averse consumers on traditional time-invariant retail prices are always better off. Collectively, our results point to a public good nature of demand response in power markets when consumers are risk averse.

The eighteenth century occupies a crucial place in the history of tears. Not only did this period gave rise to the concept of sensibility, but it also witnessed the development of new aesthetic and moral codes founded on the exaggerated use of tears. This article, which is concerned precisely with such codes, examines the nature and significance of emotional display in the eighteenth century. It argues that throughout this era, tears were associated with moral renewal and they were intended to be shared, particularly when engendered on the theatre stage. This study also shows how these collective tears were steadily devalued as a public good throughout the nineteenth century, to the point that the act of weeping became personal and intimate, valorizing the individual instead of the communal.

Civic-science integrates science knowledge with civic practice but differs from the citizen-science prototype by reframing science as a public good and citizens as both recipients of and actors in ...

Adam Auerbach, Demanding Development: The Politics of Public Goods Provision in India’s Urban Slums. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020, 328pp., $34.99. ISBN: 1108491936 (hardcover). ISBN: 9781108741330 (paperback).

This paper investigates the how government outsourcing affects efficiency and expenditures by considering how outsourcing decisions are determined along two dimensions: (i) cost differences between private firms and government suppliers of public goods and (ii) dynamics arising from cost complementarities and capacity constraints. I formulate and estimate a dynamic model of government outsourcing using project-level data from the dredging industry. Model estimates indicate substantial cost savings due to outsourcing but also that government presence in the market yields cost reduction. A counterfactual policy featuring direct competition between government and private sector firms finds a total expenditure reduction of 15.7 percent. (JEL D44, H41, H57, L84)

We perform a laboratory test of Pledge-and-Review bargaining, implementing a simplified version of the model analysed in Harstad (2021a) . In theory, this institution should increase contributions to a public good only if there is uncertainty over the value of possible future payoffs. In contrast, we find that Pledge-and-Review increases efficiency in all the settings we investigate, and that the improvement is most persistent in our setting without uncertainty. Our results suggest that the Pledge-and-Review institution may be useful, even without uncertainty, as it allows conditional cooperators to test, risk free, the cooperativeness of their partners.

A public apology is a fairly common content found on the YouTube platform to restore the reputation and regain people's trust. At the same time, Youtube can also be used as a commodity-based economic platform that allows organizations, individuals, and Google (the owner of Youtube) to earn revenue either through advertising or direct promotion. These two things reflect the dual benefits of two opposites: genuine demand in the public interest and economic exploitation for the benefit of certain parties. This is well explored by the political economy theory of media which sees the digital platform as a convergence between the moral economy of commodities, the moral economy of gifts, and the moral economy of public goods. This article aims to further explore the three elements of the political economy of the media in the context of apologies on Youtube in five cases that occurred in Indonesia. The five apology cases were analyzed using parameters reflecting the moral economy of commodities, gifts, and public goods. The results of the analysis provide a typology of apology and a model that reflects the interrelation between the three moral economies involved in every apology.

A wide range of public goods, such as open source software, possess two often-ignored features: (i) excludable and potentially rivalrous contribution benefits (e.g. status seeking) and (ii) nonexcludable and nonrival consumption costs (e.g. adoption costs). I develop a model of the voluntary provision of public goods that incorporates these features. I find that these additional features mitigate the well-known incentive problems, but introduce new ones. Costly consumption lessens the free-rider problem, leading to more efficient provision. Private benefits similarly reduce the free-rider problem, but can lead to over-provision via a negative congestion externality on the supply side. Status-seeking induces an increase in contributions to the benefit of each contributor but imposes a cost on all other consumers and contributors. Efforts to maximize welfare by a community leader or social planner often involve transferring surpluses from consumers to producers.

This study analysed how local governments react to intergovernmental competition for private capital in the public goods market. Using microlevel data for public-private partnership (PPP) projects ...

The non-excludable and non-rivalrous characteristics of public goods distinguish them from private goods. The existence of these two characteristics leads to the “free rider problem” and the variation problem, making the market supply less than the actual demand, thus causing market failure. The government should therefore intervene against this impact. At the beginning of 2020, the global outbreak of the novel COVID-19 brought significant harm to various countries, races, and groups of people. In the second half of 2020, several companies developed vaccines, which are able to fundamentally block the transmission of the virus. However, as vaccines have been reducing the severity of the epidemic in certain regions, the situation somewhat reflects non-excludability and non-rivalry, in which before officially being listed in vaccination programs, the society may have the thought of “vaccination would reduce the risk of transmission; thus, I can enjoy the reduced risk of everyone being vaccinated without paying for it.” For this reason, most countries have been purchasing vaccines for the public through government appropriations to solve the free-rider problem. It can be said that in the face of market failure caused by public goods, the government should carry out timely intervention measures, including taxation and government appropriation, to avoid negative impacts from the characteristics of public goods.

Institutions (theatres) evaluated in this paper are mediators of an unrepeatable interpretive art and they need funds from public resources of different government levels to ensure their activities. The aim of the present paper is to evaluate the efficiency of theatre management of 93 evaluated public theatres in the Czech Republic and Poland through 11 indicators. The evaluated weights of chosen indicators were determined by the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), in combination with the chosen objective method for determining the importance of indicators. From the results it is evident that big multi-genre theatres producing more genres of interpretive art (drama, opera, ballet, musical) with a bigger number of employees had the worst results in both states. Kultura je sredstvo prijenosa informacija između generacija. U radu se primjenjuju pogledi interpretativne kulture na granu kulture koja je u državama s tržišnim gospodarstvom uglavnom neprofitna. Cilj je te studije izmjeriti učinkovitost upravljanja u 93 javna kazališta u Poljskoj i Češkoj Republici u 2015. godini koristeći se s pet tehničkih i šest financijskih indikatora. Evaluirani indikatori obrađeni su metodom TOPSIS (Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) u kombinaciji s metodom odabranog cilja za određivanje važnosti pojedinih indikatora. U radu su prvo evaluirana kazališta u Češkoj, zatim ona u Poljskoj te naposljetku sva usporedno u jednom dokumentu. S obzirom na rezultate, evidentno je da kazališta u Češkoj, kao ona koja su veća, s više zaposlenih te se kao višežanrovska bave većim brojem scenskih umjetnosti (drama, opera, balet, mjuzikl) bilježe lošije rezultate. U objema državama većinom javnih kazališta upravljaju lokalne i/ili regionalne vlasti. Ni u Poljskoj ni u Češkoj ne postoje jasna i ujednačena pravila o financiranju kazališta i distribuciji novčanih sredstava među kazalištima. Još se vode rasprave bi li kulturu trebale financirati subnacionalne samoupravne razine ili središnje državne vlasti. Unatoč podjeli kulturnih institucija na one kojima upravlja država i na one kojima upravljaju lokalne i regionalne jedinice, državne institucije nisu zabilježile bolje rezultate. Također, temeljne nacionalne razlike u funkcioniranju javnih kazališta između Poljske i Češke nisu se pokazale bitnima u evaluaciji njihove učinkovitosti. Web of Science 21 3 455 423

В представленной статье на основе материалов глубинного интервью и анкетного опроса дана характеристика субъектов и практик политико-экономического взаимодействия в Кузбассе как в регионе ресурсного типа. В роли таких субъектов выступают представители региональной администрации и ресурсных компаний. Сравнительные преимущества представленного исследования заключаются именно во взгляде изнутри на данный региональный кейс, состоящий в том, что исследователи сами были погружены в реалии экономики и общества Кемеровской области. Это означает, что они занимались решением специфической именно для социологии задачи теоретизации обыденного. Решение этой задачи предполагает использование исследовательской стратегии обоснованной теории, предполагающей выбор моделей и инструментов, соответствующих особенностям объекта исследования. Выбранная методология исследования позволила описать сложившиеся в Кузбассе практики квазипубличного взаимодействия, которые характеризуются следующими чертами. Представители региональной власти и ресурсных компаний позиционируют себя как субъекты, действующие в интересах всего населения региона. При этом они монополизируют функции формулирования и реализации общественных целей развития, заявляя о том, что только они обладают необходимой для этого информацией и возможностями. В рамках такого подхода население практически исключается из числа активных субъектов политико-экономического и социального взаимодействия. В свою очередь представители властных структур и ресурсных компаний на неформальном уровне совместно реализуют как экономические, так и политико-административные функции. Власть привлекает предпринимателей к реализации своих политико-административных функций, включая финансирование производства общественных благ, различного рода социальных и инфраструктурных проектов и т. д. Предприниматели соглашаются на это, понимая, что без прямой поддержки власти ведение сколько-нибудь серьезного бизнеса невозможно. При этом все участники политико-экономического взаимодействия: политические руководители, профессиональные государственные служащие, собственники и менеджеры ресурсных компаний – ведут себя не в соответствии со своими формальными социальными ролями, а как персоны, включенные в закрытую вертикальную социальную сеть.

This paper contributes to the debate on the varieties of national manifestations of the public good(s) in higher education. Drawing on a set of 33 semi-structured interviews (with politicians, univ...

In a social dilemma, group members have equal access to collective resources, but each must decide between acting in self-interested or collectively interested ways when considering their contribution to the group. Our research focused on how the perceived fairness of contributions and outcomes affects these decisions. We report on an experiment that manipulated two factors related to fairness: dilemma-framing that emphasized either individual or collective gains, and whether the partner’s relative contribution was high, low, or equal to the subject’s. Also, subjects’ social value orientations—individualist vs. prosocial—were balanced across conditions. Subjects made two rounds of contribution decisions and received feedback on their outcomes after each. As hypothesized for first-round contributions, prosocials contributed more to public goods and framing had no discernable effect. In the second round, neither social value orientation nor framing influenced participants’ fairness evaluations when partners made a low initial contribution to the group, but dilemma-framing affected participants’ fairness evaluations when the partner made a high contribution to the group. Importantly, results generally supported key hypotheses for participants’ attempts to rectify injustices via subsequent contributions and bonus sharing. Partner’s contributions, social value orientation, and dilemma-framing all affected redistributive behaviors.

We study how accuracy and commonality of information affect the incentives of agents who voluntarily participate in collective action. Our focus is on the interaction of information and individual efforts’ complementarity. We use a private provision of a public good model that captures high complementarity through the weakest-link technology and low complementarity through the best-shot technology. Increases in the accuracy of information lead to more dispersion of individual contributions and increases (decreases) in expected provision if complementarity is low (high). Increases in commonality raise (lower) all contributions if complementarity is high (low). We interpret our results in light of recent developments for information diffusion: if one takes the view that like-minded agents are now receiving information that is less accurate and more likely to be the same than in the past, then our model predicts increased success for activities with high complementarity such as protests, and a negative effect on the development of new ideas, such as slogans or “memes,” activities that by and large depend on the best individual effort and so display low complementarity.

As one of the most potent hypothesis in political economy, the negative impact of ethnic diversity on the provision of public goods made the welfare state–nation state isomorphism seem a one-way connection. Against the grain of existing studies I argue, through a case-study of interwar Romania, that welfare states are constructed to proactively (re)build the nation, rather than retroactively emanate from it, once established. Rather than an ahistorical ethnolinguistic fractionalization, the article takes nationhood as historically fluid and contested because through institutionalized action, elites can and do proactively revamp the political arena, redistributing coalitions of winners and losers based on exogenously given criteria. The article therefore shows that nation forgers typically internalize the global social question through the topoi of local socio-economic problems construed as a national question. Because elites can pick and choose who becomes part of the national compact, the politicization of the perception of incomplete nationhood provides a sufficient ideational thrust for welfare policymaking, irrespective of pre-existing national solidarities. Consequently, welfare policies are typically layered as remedial or compensatory policies designed to foster a specific social mobility, deemed in a top-down fashion to be completing the nation.

As the COVID-19 virus spread across the globe, sport leagues and mega-events succumbed to the pandemic, shuttering even the most high-profile activities, including the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. As the global crisis deepened and competitions returned in modified formats, sport’s political uses – viewed widely – became increasingly apparent. Considered along a harder-to-softer continuum, six political uses of sport are laid bare in times of crises: resource redeployment to supplement public infrastructure needs;economic stability and stimulus;leveraged status for public good;distraction from human toil;symbol of collective resolve;and the opportunity for state re-invention. However, each of these six uses is contested and tensive. As such, the political uses of sport in a global crisis reveal both positive and negative dimensions of sport and society-at-large. As such, I present a REI-BCI (Resources-Engagement-Identity/Bread-Circus-Image) continuum to highlight the dynamic political uses of sport in times of turmoil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Global Society: Journal of Interdisciplinary International Relations is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)