Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 3 of 3
Full-Text Articles in Economics
A Note On The Valuation Of Collective Goods: Overlooked Input Market Free Riding For Non-Individually Incrementable Goods, Philip E. Graves
A Note On The Valuation Of Collective Goods: Overlooked Input Market Free Riding For Non-Individually Incrementable Goods, Philip E. Graves
PHILIP E GRAVES
For at least fifty years economists have argued that vertically-aggregated marginal willingness to pay, when set equal to marginal provision cost, will result in optimal public good provision levels. This methodological approach would be expected to yield an exact analog, in terms of optimal levels of public good provision, to efficient provision of private goods in a perfect market setting. There is, however, a potentially serious flaw in the approach as actually practiced, since initial incomes are implicitly–and wrongly–taken to be optimal. From a given income, the output demand revelation problem has long been recognized–that there will be difficulty inferring …
Voodoo Multipliers Revisited: Public Policy For Recessions And Boomtimes, Philip E. Graves
Voodoo Multipliers Revisited: Public Policy For Recessions And Boomtimes, Philip E. Graves
PHILIP E GRAVES
There is no abstract for this brief column.
An Implementable Institutional Reform That Transfers Control Of Government Spending Levels From Politicians To Voters, Philip E. Graves
An Implementable Institutional Reform That Transfers Control Of Government Spending Levels From Politicians To Voters, Philip E. Graves
PHILIP E GRAVES
Elected representatives have little incentive to pursue the interests of those electing them once they are elected. This well-known principle-agent problem leads, in a variety of theories of government, to non-optimally large levels of government expenditure. An implication is that budgetary rules are seen as necessary to constrain politicians' tax and spending behavior. Popular among such constraints are various Balanced Budget Amendment proposals. These approaches, however, are shown here to have serious limitations, including failure to address the central concern of spending level. An alternative approach is advanced here that relies on a Coase-like mechanism that transfers control of government …