Generating quantitative data requirements for pricing "publicly provided" goods and services

Description

Economists and public sector managers have long faced the problem of having to recommend social courses of action which are not "Pareto Superior" (i.e. make someone better off but at another's expense). In the absence of a well defined objective function covering the possibilities under consideration, value judgments, based only on qualitative information many times, were needed. In the present paper we demonstrate that there exists a set of public policy decisions which, using the implications of previously determined political decisions, demand only quantitative market information. These are decisions concerning the fee structure of government (municipal, state or federal) facilities which have characteristics of both private and public goods. AN example of the relatively straightforward nature of the necessary data to determine the optimal fee structure of a municipal swimming pool is constructed and used to illustrate the major points of the paper. (Author)

Subjects