The Political Economy of Publicly Provided Private Goods

Sören Blomquist and Vidar Christiansen ()
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Vidar Christiansen: Department of Economics, Postal: Department of Economics, Oslo University, PO Box 1095 Blinder, 0317 Oslo, Norway, Sweden

No 1998:14, Working Paper Series from Uppsala University, Department of Economics

Abstract: A large share of public funds is spent on private goods (education, health care, day care, etc.). This paper integrates two different approaches to the analysis of public provision of private goods. While normative public economics has established an efficiency case for such provision, the commonly held political economy view has been that it is an economically inefficient phenomenon generated by the political process. The present paper argues that the central mechanism studied in the normative approach is equally relevant to voting models of decisions on public provision. It is shown that under plausible information constraints economically efficient public provision of private goods will be part of politically rational decisions emerging from a median voter process or a representative democracy of political parties.

Keywords: political economy; public provision; private goods; in-kind transfers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 H21 H42 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 1998-06-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-gth, nep-mic, nep-pbe, nep-pol and nep-pub
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in Journal of Public Economics, 1999, pages 31-54.

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Related works:
Journal Article: The political economy of publicly provided private goods (1999)
Working Paper: The Political Economy of Publicly Provided Private Goods (1998)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:uunewp:1998_014

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