Public Providers, versus Private Providers, of Public Goods: A General Equilibrium Study of the Role of the State

This paper studies the difference between public production and public finance of public goods in a dynamic general equilibrium setup. By public finance, we mean that the public good is produced by private providers with the government financing their costs. When the model is calibrated to match fiscal data from the UK economy, the main result is that, ceteris paribus, a switch from public production to public finance can have substantial aggregate and distributional implications. Public providers cannot beat private providers in terms of aggregate efficiency. We finally design a transfer scheme that can make a switch to private provision welfare improving for all agents including public employees.public goods, growth, welfare

On the Optimal Size of Public Sector under Rent-Seeking competition from State Coffers

This paper incorporates competition for fiscal transfers (or, equivalently, rent seeking from state coffers) into a standard general equilibrium model of economic growth and endogenously chosen fiscal policy. The government generates tax revenues, but then each selfinterested individual agent tries to extract, for his own personal benefit, a fraction of these revenues. Extracted tax revenues could alternatively be used to finance economy-wide infrastructure. We look at a Nash equilibrium in individual agents' behavior, and then investigate what the society should do to discourage rent-seeking competition. The focus is on the optimal size of public sector