Welfare Implications of Congestion in Public Goods
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9256441 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kenneth M Brown (University of Notre Dame, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1973 |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 89-92 |
| Publication date | 1973-04-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Review of Social Economy (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0034-6764 • E-ISSN: 1470-1162 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/00346767300000008 |
| OpenAlex | W2007938744 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 4 |
Much of the recent analysis of public goods has arisen from dissatis? faction with Paul Samuelson's distinction between public and private goods, the former being a good which all enjoy in common in the sense that each individual's consumption of such a good leads to no subtraction from any other individual's consumption of that As others soon pointed out,1 many collective consumption goods are subject to crowding and congestion, so that additional users impose costs on current users. It has not been appreciated that, under certain circumstances, population growth may lead to a reduction in supply, or even in the demise, of the public good. This paper discusses this possibility. James Buchanan was among the first to treat congestion in the context of a theory of public goods. In his model, the number of users (n) enters each person's utility function along with the quantity produced. Thus, members of a golf club, in considering the application of a new member, would weigh his congestion cost against his contribution to revenue. Equilibrium would be reached at the point where marginal congestion cost equals marginal revenue. Because the golf club is free to turn down applications, population growth can only benefit current members, assuming that they can raise initiation fees and lower their own dues. When exclusion of would-be users is not possible, however, the possible results are more varied. Another method of interpreting congestion (instead of entering n into each person's utility function) is to picture congestion as a reduc? tion in the amount of the good available for consumption by each person.2 Public goods are usually described by the equations
Club · Consumption (sociology) · Context (archaeology) · Economics · Excludability · Marginal cost · Marginal utility · Microeconomics · Population · Private good · Public economics · Public good · Revenue · Economic theories and models · Finance · Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth
| Highly cited | No |
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