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This book is a broad survey of the literature on public goods. There has been an explosion of research in the last ten years in a broad variety of - eas in this literature and the time seems right for a survey of this work. This includes the recent work on dynamic theories of public goods, s- ond-best financing methods, surveys and contingent valuation in determ- ing the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for public goods, voting models, p- vately produced public goods, charity and national radio, experiments on public goods, public inputs, public capital and infrastructure, the Tiebout sorting mechanism, local public goods (LPGs), club goods, and fiscal competition and coordination. We survey developments in the theory and the empirical work in each area. We also present the classic results to place the new developments in context. This book is appropriate for advanced undergraduates, graduate students who wish to learn the latest research in this area, and for practitioners who want to broaden their knowledge outside their own area of expertise. We present the background for each result and try to give the reader a feel for how a particular area of the literature developed. The technical results are provided and an intuitive explanation for them is also given. We also p- sent some new results in many of the chapters as well. Each chapter is r- sonably self-contained.
List of contents
First-Best Public Provision of Pure Public Goods.- Second-Best Public Provision of Pure Public Goods.- Determining Demand for Public Goods: Voting and Mechanisms.- Determining the Demand for Public Goods: Surveys and Indirect Estimation.- Privately Provided Public Goods.- Extensions.- Neutrality Results.- Empirical Evidence on Charitable Contributions.- Further Evidence on Privately Provided Public Goods.- Experimental Evidence on the Free Rider Problem.- The Effect of Public Inputs on the Economy in Static Models.- The Effects of Public Capital in Dynamic Models.- Empirical Work on the Public Capital Hypothesis.- Local Public Goods, Club Goods, and the Tiebout Hypothesis.- Fiscal Competition.- Empirical Testing with Local Public Goods.
Summary
This is a wide-ranging survey of the theory and evidence on public goods. Its four parts present the main literature on public goods, both theoretical and empirical, in a systematic manner. Moreover, the authors extend the existing literature in numerous ways. Each section of the book includes a discussion of the main results, emphasizing the innovations and new outcomes. The main strength of the book is the breadth and depth of its coverage. The organization of topics covered by the book follows the recent literature and the presentation is written for a broad audience. Where technical material is presented, it is done in a way that is generally well explained and easy to follow. The book is thus suitable as a textbook for graduate and upper level undergraduate public finance courses as well as for researchers interested in the field.
