Public Goods

Unlike private goods, which the market can produce and sell, public goods are ones that people can freely use and share with others. A pure public good is nonexcludable (people cannot be excluded from its use) and joint in consumption or nonrival (use by one person will not reduce its availability to others). This entry describes the nature of public goods and contrasts the approaches to them taken by economists and political scientists. When allocating public or semipublic goods by means of the coercive powers of the state—legislation, budgeting, and taxation—governments have to handle the problematic of these goods, including tax evasion (free riding), oversupply (rent seeking), and undersupply (preference distortions), as well as allocation and distribution in trade-offs. The entry examines these phenomena and concludes with a look at the allocation of common goods in a global context.