Are Public Goods Really Common Pools? Considerations of the Evolution of Policing and Highways in England

Bruce Benson

Economic Inquiry, 1994, vol. 32, issue 2, 249-71

Abstract: A series of property rights alterations made by the English government undermined individuals' incentives to cooperate in the production of both policing and road maintenance, ultimately leading to government production. The result is more accurately characterized as a free-access common pool than as a public good. Common-pool analysis suggests an array of possible policy prescriptions involving the internalization of costs and benefits through privatization of rights. In contrast, the public-goods concept appears to be simply an ex post justification for claiming that the only efficient policy is public provision of these services at zero money prices. Copyright 1994 by Oxford University Press.

Date: 1994
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