Public-private partnerships for the provision of public goods: theory and an application to NGOs

Timothy Besley and Maitreesh Ghatak

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: When will a public good or service be provided by the government, when will it be provided by a NGO, and when will we see a private-public partnership? This paper provides a model where a typical public good requires different inputs which raises the possibility of partnerships to exploit comparative advantages of different parties. But hold-up problems due to contractual incompleteness in specifying tasks discourage separation of ownership and management. The fact that public goods have the property of non-rivalry and non-excludability and that NGOs tend to be non-profits drives our key results. We apply the framework to NGOs in developing countries which, in the last few decades, have been increasingly involved in various capacities in the provision of a wide range of public goods and services.

Keywords: public goods; NGOs; incomplete contracting; public-private partnerships (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D23 H40 L30 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ppm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Published in Research in Economics, June, 2017, 71(2), pp. 356-371. ISSN: 1090-9443

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/75216/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Public–private partnerships for the provision of public goods: Theory and an application to NGOs (2017)
Working Paper: Public-Private Partnership for the Provision of Public Goods: Theory and an Application to NGOs (1999)
Working Paper: Public-private partnership for the provision of public goods: theory and an application to NGOs (1999)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:75216

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().