When Can Public Policy Makers Rely on Private Markets? The Effective Provision of Social Services

Rebecca M. Blank

No 7099, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The privatization of social services is being increasingly discussed. The social services market is characterized by multiple market failures, including informational asymmetries, agency problems, externalities, and distributional concerns. Consumers may care as much or more about quality of services than about price. If quality is readily observable, the government can regulate private providers to assure standards are met. But when standards are difficult to observe or when the recipient is not the agent who makes the decisions, government ownership may be preferable. This paper categorizes the market situations in which the government provision of social services is likely to be most versus least attractive.

JEL-codes: H11 I00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-ind, nep-mic, nep-pbe, nep-pke and nep-pub
Date: 1999-04
Note: PE LS CH
View list of references View citations in EconPapers

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w7099.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html.

Related works:
Journal Article: When Can Public Policy Makers Rely on Private Markets? The Effective Provision of Social Services (2000)
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: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:7099

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w7099
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc
Address: National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by ().