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Societies for the History of Economics

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From:
J. (J.)
Date:
Fri Mar 31 17:18:26 2006
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----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- 
 
 
Patrick, 
 
It is true that Samuelson does not use the language of "exclusion" 
or "non-exclusion" in his original papers.  But, I would contend that 
the concept is there in his discussion. 
 
In his original 1954 paper he defines "collective consumption goods" 
(a much better term, IMHO, than the implicitly tautological "public goods" 
(which can somehow mysteriously be "privately provided")) using the 
"jointness" 
or non-rivalry language, "each individual's consumption of such a good 
leads to 
no subtraction from any other individual's consumption of that good" is his 
initial characterization of such goods (p. 387). 
 
However, when he discusses the "Impossibility ofdecentralized 
spontaneous solution," Samuelson clearly invokes an implicit 
non-excudability as he describes the phenomenon we now label the 
"free rider" problem, arising from the "'external effects' basic to the 
notion of collective consumption goods" (p. 389).  After invoking the 
possibility of everybody acting like a "parametric decentralized 
bureaucrat" 
(something he clearly approves of), he notes that "by departing from 
his indoctrinated rules, any one person can hope to snatch some selfish 
benefits in a way not possible under the self-policing competitive 
pricing of private goods..." (thereby making it impossible for "the 
grand ensemble of optimizing equations to have that special pattern of 
zeros"...). 
 
However, it is certainly the case that Coase served a useful purpose 
in bringing out more clearly what was involved in this ability of the 
individual to so "snatch selfish benefits." 
 
Barkley Rosser 
 
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