IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mnh/spaper/2747.html

A utilitarian approach to the provision and pricing of excludable public goods

Author

Listed:
  • Hellwig, Martin

Abstract

The paper studies utilitarian welfare maximization in a model with an excludable public good where individual preferences are private information. If inequality aversion is large, optimal allocations involve the use of admission fees and exclusion to redistribute resources from people who benefit a lot from the public good to people who benefit little. If inequality aversion is close to zero, optimal admission fees are zero. These results are robust if earning abilities provide an additional source of heterogeneity and income taxation an additional policy instrument.

Suggested Citation

  • Hellwig, Martin, 2003. "A utilitarian approach to the provision and pricing of excludable public goods," Papers 03-36, Sonderforschungsbreich 504.
    • Handle: RePEc:mnh:spaper:2747
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://madoc.bib.uni-mannheim.de/2747/1/dp03_36.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Boyer, Pierre C., 2015. "Inequality-averse principal, exogenous budget, and second-best public-goods provision," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 61-63.
    2. Han, Seungjin, 2015. "Robust competitive auctions," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 207-210.
    3. Hanming Fang & Peter Norman, 2014. "Toward an efficiency rationale for the public provision of private goods," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 56(2), pages 375-408, June.
    4. Vincent Meisner & Pascal Pillath, 2024. "Monetizing digital content with network effects: A mechanism-design approach," Papers 2408.15196, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2025.
    5. Grunewald, Andreas & Hansen, Emanuel & Pönitzsch, Gert, 2014. "Political Selection and the Concentration of Political Power," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100339, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    6. Maniquet, François & Sprumont, Yves, 2010. "Sharing the cost of a public good: An incentive-constrained axiomatic approach," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 275-302, January.
    7. Hanming Fang & Peter Norman, 2003. "An Efficiency Rationale for Bundling of Public Goods," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1441, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    8. Martin F. Hellwig, 2010. "Utilitarian mechanism design for an excludable public good," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 44(3), pages 361-397, September.
    9. Obara, Takuya & 小原, 拓也 & Tsugawa, Shuichi & Managi, Shunsuke, 2019. "Envy-free Pricing for Impure Public Good," CCES Discussion Paper Series 69, Center for Research on Contemporary Economic Systems, Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University.
    10. Meisner, Vincent & Pillath, Pascal, 2024. "Monetizing digital content with network effects: A mechanism-design approach," VfS Annual Conference 2024 (Berlin): Upcoming Labor Market Challenges 302417, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    11. Takuya Obara & Shuichi Tsugawa & Shunsuke Managi, 2021. "$$\lambda $$ λ envy-free pricing for impure public good," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 9(1), pages 11-25, April.
    12. Li, Yunan & Zhang, Xingtan, 2024. "Collective decision through an informed mediator," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 218(C).
    13. Vincent Meisner & Pascal Pillath, 2024. "Monetizing digital content with network effects: A mechanism-design approach," Berlin School of Economics Discussion Papers 0049, Berlin School of Economics.
    14. Hanming Fang & Peter Norman, 2011. "Corrigendum: Optimal Provision of Multiple Excludable Public Goods," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(1), pages 328-328, February.
    15. Vincent Meisner & Pascal Pillath, 2025. "Monetizing Digital Content with Network Effects," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 541, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    16. Hellwig, Martin F., 2005. "A utilitarian approach to the provision and pricing of excludable public goods," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(11-12), pages 1981-2003, December.
    17. Hans Gersbach, 2010. "Democratic Provision of Divisible Public Goods," CESifo Working Paper Series 2939, CESifo.
    18. Yeti Nisha Madhoo & Shyam Nath, 2014. "Beneficiary charges: The Cinderella of subnational finance," Chapters, in: Richard M. Bird & Jorge Martinez-Vazquez (ed.), Taxation and Development: The Weakest Link?, chapter 11, pages 364-402, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    19. Hellwig, Martin, 2004. "Optimal income taxation, public-goods provision and public-sector pricing : a contribution to the foundations of public economics," Papers 04-42, Sonderforschungsbreich 504.
    20. OBARA, Takuya, 2016. "The optimal differentiated income taxation for groups categorized based on benefits from public goods," CCES Discussion Paper Series 64, Center for Research on Contemporary Economic Systems, Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University.
    21. Yeti Nisha Madhoo & Shyam Nath, 2010. "Beneficiary Charges: The Cinderella of Subnational Finance," International Center for Public Policy Working Paper Series, at AYSPS, GSU paper1317, International Center for Public Policy, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies, Georgia State University.
    22. Gravel, Nicolas & Poitevin, Michel, 2019. "Optimal provision of a public good with costly exclusion," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 451-460.
    23. Hellwig, Martin F., 2007. "The provision and pricing of excludable public goods: Ramsey-Boiteux pricing versus bundling," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(3-4), pages 511-540, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mnh:spaper:2747. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Katharina Rautenberg (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfmande.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.