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Is there a Case for Public Provision of Private Goods if Preferences are Heterogeneous? An Example with Day Care

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  • Sören Blomquist
  • Vidar Christiansen

Abstract

A strong case for public provision of certain private goods has been established for an economy in which individuals have homogeneous preferences but differ in skill levels. There has been a critique of this model/mechanism arguing that heterogeneous preferences at a given skill level would invalidate the mechanism, implying that public provision of private goods is merely of theoretical, not of practical interest. The argument is that if the public provision level is set so as to fit the low skill person with a high preference for the publicly provided good, the low skill person with a low preference for the good comes out worse than in a system without public provision. In this paper we take this critique seriously and investigate if a public provision scheme can be constructed so that we obtain a strict Pareto improvement when going from a pure tax/transfer system to the public provision scheme even if preferences are heterogeneous. We find that heterogeneous preferences do not invalidate the benefits of publicly provided private goods. We also characterise the optimum tax and public provision policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Sören Blomquist & Vidar Christiansen, 2003. "Is there a Case for Public Provision of Private Goods if Preferences are Heterogeneous? An Example with Day Care," CESifo Working Paper Series 938, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_938
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Avner Ben-Ner, 2006. "For-Profit, State and Non-Profit: How to Cut the Pie Among the Three Sectors," Chapters, in: Jean-Philippe Touffut (ed.), Advancing Public Goods, chapter 2, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Pierre Salmon, 2003. "The assignment of powers in an open-ended European Union," Post-Print hal-00445601, HAL.
    3. Sören Blomquist & Luca Micheletto, 2009. "Nonlinear Income Taxation And Matching Grants In A Federation With Decentralized In-Kind Transfers," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 50(2), pages 543-575, May.
    4. Blomquist, Sören & Micheletto, Luca, 2004. "Redistribution, In-Kind Transfers and Matching Grants when the Federal Government Lacks Information on Local Costs," Working Paper Series 2004:15, Uppsala University, Department of Economics.
    5. Jukka Pirttilä & Sanna Tenhunen, 2005. "Pawns and Queens Revisited: Public Provision of Private Goods When Individuals Make Mistakes Abstract: This paper analyses the optimal tax policy and public provision of private goods when individuals," Working Papers 212, Työn ja talouden tutkimus LABORE, The Labour Institute for Economic Research LABORE.
    6. Jukka Pirttilä & Sanna Tenhunen, 2008. "Pawns and queens revisited: public provision of private goods when individuals make mistakes," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 15(5), pages 599-619, October.

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    Keywords

    public provision; private goods; in-kind transfer; heterogeneous preferences; day care;
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