28
votes
How do economists explain why people contribute to Wikipedia?
Voluntarily contributing to a public good (such as Wikipedia) is a strong social norm. The tendency to follow such norms even if this is costly in the short run has developed over humans' evolutionary ...
- 7,119
15
votes
How do economists explain why people contribute to Wikipedia?
tl;dr: There could be multiple explanations depending on how you want to treat Wikipedia. If you want to treat Wikipedia as public good where everyone contributes a small part towards its creation and ...
- 57.7k
10
votes
Why are there fewer high schools than elementary schools?
Two relevant economic principles are:
Economies of scale: These are a more significant issue for middle and especially high schools which have a greater need for specialist teachers, as others have ...
- 8,584
8
votes
Accepted
Is climate change an economic question?
Climate change in itself, its measurement and the fact that it is happening, and modeling its speed or trying to discover its causes (e.g., carbon emissions, methane emissions and so on) is not an ...
- 57.7k
8
votes
How do economists explain why people contribute to Wikipedia?
Look at the data
For starters, the obvious thing is to look at the data about the self-reported reasons for contributing to wikipedia (and I'm surprised that neither the question asker nor most of the ...
- 488
7
votes
If public roads are public goods, in what way are they non-rivalrous?
It depends actually a non-congested road can be considered non-rivalrous as when you drive there you don’t really reduce the enjoyment or marginal utility of other people driving them.
However, once ...
- 57.7k
6
votes
Accepted
Are social goods and public goods the same thing?
I guess it might depend on the author. Here's another classification:
The classifications of public goods associated to agriculture identify two main categories: environmental goods and non-...
6
votes
How does the Austrian school address the free-rider problem for public goods like national defense?
Austrian School, as every other school including let's say Marxist School, as such is a set of methodologies not necessarily policy conclusions about what policies ought to be pursued (see Brue & ...
- 57.7k
5
votes
Accepted
Nash equilibrium - mistake in proof of paper?
The objective is to show that, as long as $f'(n\hat\theta)\ne \alpha$, a firm can always engineer a package $(p',\hat\theta')=(p+\Delta p,\hat\theta+\Delta \hat{\theta})$ such that (i) a caring ...
- 887
5
votes
Is a hyperlink a kind of informational public good?
In the Samuelson's definition of public good, the good must be non-excludable and non-rivalrous.
Hyperlinks (if public and pointing to public pages) are non-excludable, and --to the condition of not ...
- 151
4
votes
Why are there fewer high schools than elementary schools?
Interesting question..... I attended public schools at all three levels and they were less than a mile from where I lived --- the elementary school and the high school were less than half a mile away, ...
- 250
3
votes
Accepted
Why is Walras equilibrium inefficient when we are dealing with public goods?
In a competitive market for a private good (y) individuals may consume different quantities but the equilibrium condition requires that: $$ \frac{\frac{\delta u^{i}}{\delta y}}{\frac{\delta u^{i}}{\...
- 860
3
votes
Pareto efficient quantity of public good (quasi-linear preferences)
I don't think it is true in a standard public good economy the question is referring to. Consider the following counterexample:
Suppose $I = \{1,2\}$ and utility of the individual $i$ depends on his ...
- 9,421
3
votes
Accepted
Why two goods are of different types of Cross Elasticity if we swap them in formula?
The cross elasticity of demand $E_{XY}^D$ is defined as the percent change in quantity demanded for X divided by the percent change in price of Y, holding the price of X fixed.
The problem with your ...
- 503
3
votes
Accepted
Pareto Efficient level of Public Good
The social welfare maximizing outcome you computed (by equating the sum of marginal benefits to marginal cost) is just one of the Pareto efficient outcomes. Although maximization of joint utilities is ...
- 15.8k
3
votes
Which parts of health care can be considered market failures?
The most common one I have considered is health insurance as a private market. It becomes a case of the "market for lemons", where in this case the `lemons' are the people seeking insurance. ...
- 3,477
3
votes
Accepted
Is GDP biased against public goods?
Is GDP biased against public goods?
There is no evidence GDP is biased against public goods. Moreover, that twitter user you reference clearly did not understand what public goods are because the ...
- 57.7k
3
votes
Accepted
Efficiency Criteria to provide a public good?
A situation in which the public good is not provided is inefficient; it is possible to make both consumers better off. To see this, let $c_1$ and $c_2$ be to numbers such that $c_1+c_2=100$, $c_1<...
- 13.5k
3
votes
The present value of exterminating the human race in 200 years: Can I afford it? Can you?
The question of the appropriate discount rate for assessing projects with very long-term consequences is extremely important (although framing it in terms of "the present value of exterminating ...
- 8,584
3
votes
What are examples of public goods where marginal individual contributions tend to zero?
Two examples that I can think are:
$\Rightarrow$ A person in Delhi contributing money for the construction of a well in Nairobi
$\Rightarrow$ A person spending time at a teaching programme for ...
- 51
2
votes
Is climate change an economic question?
What is in the realm of economics is not well-defined. Nowadays, you see many topics that were traditionally tackled by political scientists, sociologists, criminalistics, psychologists, ...
- 101
2
votes
Is a smartphone app(Non premium or subscribed service like Netflix) a public good?
Am I correct to say that the app is non-excludable?
I am sorry to say but this is wrong. Just assume google removes the application from the store. All android users would be excluded. There are many ...
- 520
2
votes
Accepted
Are there any analysis of what is the net benefit of NASA program to US economy?
I had a look, and there's not a alot, and not much that is current. The problem is, the question (What is the impact of NASA on the economy?) is too big and too difficult to measure. I think you'll ...
- 326
2
votes
Accepted
Free rider problem in game theory
Let $b_i\in\{0,B\}$ be $i$'s strategy. Then $i$'s payoff depends on the strategy profile $(b_i,b_{-i})$, where $b_{-i}=(b_j)_{j\ne i}$.
\begin{equation}
u_i(b_i,b_{-i})=
\begin{cases}
v_i&\text{...
- 15.8k
2
votes
Accepted
Aggregating in a Continuum
To obtain $\frac{\partial y}{\partial z_n}=0$, you implicitly assume that each consumer takes its own skill level as given. And in such a case, in reality the consumer optimizes with respect to labor ...
- 33.9k
2
votes
Accepted
Simple General Equilibrium Model of Public Goods: Intuition?
You can take MRS as the willingness to pay (Take the other good in MRS as money). If the good is a private good that costs 3, your willingness to pay should be 3 because you are buying it for yourself....
- 340
2
votes
nash equilibrium public good - is this correct?
For the Nash equilibrium of any simultaneous-play game, you are looking for the point where each player is playing a best response to all other players at the same time.
So your steps to solving this ...
- 636
2
votes
Accepted
(Microeconomics) How to classify Public Goods and Common Resources in Externalities?
First let's clarify some terminology: I assume that with "common resources" you mean goods that are non-excludable but rivalrous. The term that applies in those cases is open access. In common ...
- 2,373
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible