Learning Materials
Features
Discover
Chapter 5: Q 8 (page 120)
Many economists suggest that our nation's legal system is an example of a public good. Does the legal system satisfy the key properties of public good? Explain your reasoning.
Yes, the legal system is a public good.
Over 30 million students worldwide already upgrade their learning with 91影视!
All the tools & learning materials you need for study success - in one app.
Get started for free
Displayed in the diagram below are conditions in the market for residential Internet access in a U.S. state. The government of this state has determined that access to the Internet improves the learning skills of children, which it has concluded is an external benefit of Internet access. The government has also concluded that if these external benefits were to be taken into account, 3 million residents would have Internet access. Suppose that the state government鈥檚 judgments about the benefits of Internet access are correct and that it wishes to offer a per-unit subsidy just sufficient to increase total Internet access to 3 million residences. What per-unit subsidy should it offer? Use the diagram to explain how providing this subsidy would affect conditions in the state鈥檚 market for residential Internet access.
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.
The French government recently allocated the equivalent of more than $120 million in public funds to Quaero (Latin for 鈥淚 search鈥�), an Internet search engine analogous to Google or Yahoo. Does an Internet search engine satisfy the key characteristics of public good? Why or why not? Based on your answer, is a publicly funded Internet search engine a public good or a government-sponsored good?
A government agency is contemplating launching an effort to expand the scope of its activities. One rationale for doing so is that another government agency might make the same effort and, if successful, receive larger budget allocations in future years. Another rationale for expanding the agency鈥檚 activities is that this will make the jobs of its workers more interesting, which may help the government agency attract better-qualified employees. Nevertheless, to broaden its legal mandate, the agency will have to convince more than half of the House of Representatives and the Senate to approve a formal proposal to expand its activities. In addition, to expand its activities, the agency must have the authority to force private companies it does not currently regulate to be officially licensed by agency personnel. Identify which aspects of this problem are similar to those faced by firms that operate in private markets and which aspects are specific to the public sector.
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?
What do you think about this solution?
We value your feedback to improve our textbook solutions.
Explanations 
Textbooks 
Flashcards 
91影视 AI 
Notes 
Study Plans 
Study Sets 
Find a degree 
Magazine