IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/pubfin/v23y1995i2p167-192.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Incentives, Optimality, and Publicly Provided Goods: the Case of Mental Health Services

Author

Listed:
  • Richard G. Frank

    (Harvard University)

  • Martin Gaynor

    (Johns Hopkins University)

Abstract

In this article, the authors investigate the incentives present in intergovernment transfers for public mental health care. This represents an important issue because of the large portion of mental health care that is provided by local governments, the central role of states in financing care via intergovernment transfers, and recent innovations adopted by some states altering the traditional terms of these transfers. Using a relatively simple model, the authors show that when a state government provides both financing and a free input into local government production, there will be excessive use of that input. If local government and society differ in their preferences, setting the price of the input at marginal cost will not induce optimal behavior. The optimal prices are proportional to the sum of the elasticities of the provider's expected supply of services with respect to the subsidy (tax). These results are analogous to those for optimal commodity taxation. Examination of the transfer contracts for Wisconsin, Ohio, and for Texas reveals that these contracts may not be optimal. These departures from optimal decisions may be partially due to the practical issues related to implementation of optimal transfer arrangements, such as setting subsidy or tax levels or imposing budget reductions.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard G. Frank & Martin Gaynor, 1995. "Incentives, Optimality, and Publicly Provided Goods: the Case of Mental Health Services," Public Finance Review, , vol. 23(2), pages 167-192, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:pubfin:v:23:y:1995:i:2:p:167-192
    DOI: 10.1177/109114219502300203
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/109114219502300203
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/109114219502300203?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert P. Inman, 1987. "Federal Assistance and Local Services in the United States: The Evolution of a New Federalist Fiscal Order," NBER Working Papers 2283, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Holmstrom, Bengt R. & Tirole, Jean, 1989. "The theory of the firm," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: R. Schmalensee & R. Willig (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 2, pages 61-133, Elsevier.
    3. Thomas McGuire & Michael Riordan, 1993. "Contracting for Community-Based Public Mental Health Services," Papers 0043, Boston University - Industry Studies Programme.
    4. A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), 1985. "Handbook of Public Economics," Handbook of Public Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    5. Shapiro, C. & Willing, D.R., 1990. "Economic Rationales For The Scope Of Privatization," Papers 41, Princeton, Woodrow Wilson School - Discussion Paper.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Richard G. Frank & Martin Gaynor, 1991. "Organizational Failure and Government Transfers: Evidence From an Experiment in the Financing of Mental Health Care," NBER Working Papers 3923, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Machnes, Yaffa, 1996. "Incentives and production of mental health services," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 459-466, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hyvärinen, Jari, 2004. "EU Outsourcing to the East, Governance and Innovation Systems in the Baltic Countries - A Three-Stage Approach," Discussion Papers 934, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    2. Lulfesmann, Christoph, 2007. "On the virtues of privatization when government is benevolent," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 17-34, September.
    3. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1997. "A Survey of Corporate Governance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(2), pages 737-783, June.
    4. Moen, Espen R. & ,, 2003. "The Proper Scope of Governments When Costs are Contractible," CEPR Discussion Papers 3992, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Alexander Radygin & Revold Entov & Marina Turuntseva & Alena Gontmakher & Harry Swain & Jeff Carruthers & Karen Minden & Cheryl Urban, 2002. "The problems of corporate governance in Russia and its regions," Published Papers 12, Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, revised 2002.
    6. Janvier D. Nkurunziza, 2005. "Reputation and Credit without Collateral in Africa`s Formal Banking," Economics Series Working Papers WPS/2005-02, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    7. Juan Carlos Bárcena-Ruiz & F. Javier Casado-Izaga, 2005. "Spatial competition and the duration of managerial incentive contracts," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 29(2), pages 331-349, May.
    8. Kaplow, Louis & Shapiro, Carl, 2007. "Antitrust," Handbook of Law and Economics, in: A. Mitchell Polinsky & Steven Shavell (ed.), Handbook of Law and Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 15, pages 1073-1225, Elsevier.
    9. Mikko Leppämäki & Vesa Kanniainen, 2000. "Entrepreneurship in a Unionised Economy," CESifo Working Paper Series 379, CESifo.
    10. David Martimort & Flavio Menezes & Myrna Wooders & ELISABETTA IOSSA & DAVID MARTIMORT, 2015. "The Simple Microeconomics of Public-Private Partnerships," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 17(1), pages 4-48, February.
    11. Imam, M. & Jamasb, T. & Llorca, M. & Llorca, M., 2018. "Power Sector Reform and Corruption: Evidence from Electricity Industry in Sub-Saharan Africa," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1801, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    12. Carpenter, Jeffrey P. & Bowles, Samuel & Gintis, Herbert, 2006. "Mutual Monitoring in Teams: Theory and Experimental Evidence on the Importance of Reciprocity," IZA Discussion Papers 2106, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Ferrell, Allen & Liang, Hao & Renneboog, Luc, 2016. "Socially responsible firms," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(3), pages 585-606.
    14. Elisabetta Iossa & David Martimort, 2012. "Risk allocation and the costs and benefits of public--private partnerships," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 43(3), pages 442-474, September.
    15. Belzil, Christian & Sidibé, Modibo, 2016. "Internal and External Validity of Experimental Risk and Time Preferences," IZA Discussion Papers 10348, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    16. David S. Lee & Pauline Leung & Christopher J. O’Leary & Zhuan Pei & Simon Quach, 2021. "Are Sufficient Statistics Necessary? Nonparametric Measurement of Deadweight Loss from Unemployment Insurance," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 39(S2), pages 455-506.
    17. Sahm, Marco, 2006. "Essays in Public Economic Theory," Munich Dissertations in Economics 5633, University of Munich, Department of Economics.
    18. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pc:p:3573-3630 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Bassi, Vittorio & Nyshadham, Anant & Tamayo, Jorge & Adhvaryu, Achyuta, 2020. "No Line Left Behind: Assortative Matching Inside the Firm," CEPR Discussion Papers 14554, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    20. David Albouy & Andrew Hanson, 2014. "Are Houses Too Big or In the Wrong Place? Tax Benefits to Housing and Inefficiencies in Location and Consumption," Tax Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(1), pages 63-96.
    21. J Peter Neary, 2001. "International Trade - Commercial Policy," Working Papers 200123, School of Economics, University College Dublin.

    More about this item

    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:sae:pubfin:v:23:y:1995:i:2:p:167-192. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.