Subject: | |
From: | J. (J.) |
Date: | Fri Mar 31 17:18:26 2006 |
Content-Type: | text/plain |
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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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