Chapter 5: Q. 5.2 (page 100)
Distinguish between private goods and public goods and explain the nature of the free-rider problem.
Private are owned and public goods are for all.
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After a government implements a voucher program, granting funds that families can spend at schools of their choice, numerous students in public schools switch to private schools. Parents’ and students’ valuations of the services provided at both private and public schools adjust to equality with
the true market price of educational services. Is anyone likely to lose out nonetheless? If so, who?
A government offers to let a number of students at a public school transfer to a private school under two conditions: It will transmit to the private school the same per-pupil subsidy it provides the public school, and the private school will be required to admit the students at a below-market net tuition rate. Will the economic outcome be the same as the one that would have arisen if the government instead simply provided students with grants to cover the current market tuition rate at the private school? (Hint: Does it matter if schools receive payments directly from the government or from consumers?)
Consider a nation with a government that does not provide people with property rights for a number of items and that fails to enforce the property rights it does not assign for the remaining items. Would externality be more or less in this nation than in a country such as the United States? Explain.
Suppose that the current price of a tablet device is \(300 and that people are buying 1 million devices per year. The government decides to begin subsidizing the purchase of new tablet devices. The government believes that the appropriate price is \)260 per tablet, so the program offers to send people cash for the difference between \(260 and whatever the people pay for each tablet they buy.
(a) If no consumers change their tablet-buying behavior, how much will this program cost the taxpayers?
(b) Will the subsidy cause people to buy more, fewer, or the same number of tablets? Explain.
(c) Suppose that people end up buying 1.5 million tablets once the program is in place. If the market price of tablets does not change, how much will this program cost the taxpayers?
(d) Under the assumption that the program causes people to buy 1.5 million tablets and also causes the market price of tablets to rise to \)320, how much will this program cost the taxpayers?
Based on your answer to Question 5-17, if Pennsylvania's government aims to correct the steel market's negative externality via an effluent fee, is the appropriate fee higher or lower now than steel producers have adopted the new technique? Why or why not?
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