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The purpose of this paper is to examine the commonly used policy approach to subsidize the private provision of public goods by granting agents deductions with respect to their income or corporate tax burden.

In the framework of a microeconomic representative agent model the commonly used policy approach to subsidize donations by granting agents deductions with respect to their income tax burden is examined. The paper especially considers that most income tax schemes are progressive and deductibility is limited. After pointing to the problems arising from these specific properties of tax‐refund schemes the paper turns towards the effects that such a tax‐refund scheme has with respect to donations on the one hand and welfare on the other hand.

Findings shows that the effects of the commonly practiced methods of supporting donations depend crucially on the specific properties of the tax scheme and preferences of agents. While Pareto‐improvements and even Pareto‐efficiency can result from the implementation of such a scheme, it is also conceivable that some agents perceive a utility reduction.

The analysis builds on a static approach although taxation also exerts important dynamic effects. These effects have been neglected in the current paper as the interaction of taxation and preferences is already quite complex. However, they should be considered in future research.

Owing to the dependency of welfare effects on the tariff structure, income tax reforms as they are planned in many countries might not only induce a reduction in donations, but might as a result also alter the induced welfare effects.

The paper shows that the generally applied tax‐refund schemes constitute no effective means to induce optimal donation levels. Implications depend crucially on, e.g. deductibility ceilings and progressiveness of tax rates.

Public economics has recently introduced the concept of global public goods as a new category of public goods whose provision is central for promoting the well‐being of individuals in today's globalized world. The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which introducing this new concept in international development is helpful for understanding human well‐being enhancement.

The paper considers some implications of the concept of the common good for international development.

The concept of global public goods could be more effective if the conception of well‐being it assumes is broadened beyond the individual level. “Living well” or the “good life” does not dwell in individual lives only, but also in the lives of the communities which human beings form. A successful provision of global public goods depends on this recognition that the “good life” of the communities that people form is a constitutive component of the “good life” of individual human beings.

The paper suggests that the rediscovery of the concept of the common good, and identification of how to nurture it, constitute one of the major tasks for development theory and policy.

This paper aims to investigate empirically the findings of an analytical impure public good model. The impure public good model described in this study allows for the application of different technologies generating public and private characteristics. The influence of the individual technologies on the total level of (impure) public good provision is of main concern in this study.

After the illustration of the impure public good model, the analytical results are compared to the results of a numerical approach based on climate policy in Germany.

The study shows that comparative static analyses do not always generate clear results. Therefore, the numerical approach is helpful to derive unambiguous results. The paper finds that technologies which exclusively generate private characteristics may have significant effects on total impure public good provision, since they may replace the private characteristics of the impure public good.

This paper provides useful information on the influence of the individual technologies on the total level of (impure) public good provision.

In this paper we show how the Kolm triangle method, which is a standard tool for visualizing allocations in a public good economy, can also be used to provide a diagrammatical exposition of matching mechanisms and their effects on public good supply and welfare. In particular, we describe, on the one hand, for which income distributions interior matching equilibria result, and on the other hand, for which income distributions the agents voluntarily participate in a matching mechanism. As a novel result, we especially show that the “participation zone” is larger than the “interiority zone”

We employ the Kolm triangle approach, which has – compared to most other graphical methods for representing allocations in a public good economy – the advantage that it allows for showing the aggregate budget constraint, the levels of considered agents' private consumption, and the level of public good supply directly in the same diagram.

The Kolm triangle method can be used to visualize important effects of matching in an elegant way, so basically the increase of public good supply through matching. The interiority of matching depends on the income distribution and especially, on how the “interiority zone” is shrinking when the matching rate increases. Moreover, we were able to delimit the “participation zone” in the Kolm triangle. An important and novel insight is that the participation zone is larger than the interiority zone, which means that also corner matching equilibria in which only one agent makes a positive flat contribution to the public good may make both considered agents better off.

Corner matching equilibria in which only one agent makes a positive flat contribution to the public good may improve all considered agents' welfare. How this welfare effect can be generalized to the case of different utility functions and matching rates will be an issue of future research.

The examined matching mechanism finds application in many policy fields where public good undersupply is pending. International climate policy is one of these fields of application, for example.

The Kolm triangle method has been particularly helpful to describe the Nash equilibrium in the case of non-cooperative public good provision and to compare this outcome with Pareto efficient public good allocations. Furthermore, the Kolm triangle approach facilitates the analysis of mechanisms for attaining an efficient public good allocation like the Lindahl equilibrium as well as the study of preconditions and limitations faced by such mechanisms. An important and novel insight of our study is that the participation zone is larger than the interiority zone.

THE Reference Department of Paisley Central Library today occupies the room which was the original Public Library built in 1870 and opened to the public in April 1871. Since that date two extensions to the building have taken place. The first, in 1882, provided a separate room for both Reference and Lending libraries; the second, opened in 1938, provided a new Children's Department. Together with the original cost of the building, these extensions were entirely financed by Sir Peter Coats, James Coats of Auchendrane and Daniel Coats respectively. The people of Paisley indeed owe much to this one family, whose generosity was great. They not only provided the capital required but continued to donate many useful and often extremely valuable works of reference over the many years that followed. In 1975 Paisley Library was incorporated in the new Renfrew District library service.

This study aims to measure the relationship between the current practice status of good governance and that of integrity in the public sector of Malaysia.

This study collected primary data based on a set of questionnaire surveys among heads of 109 departments and agencies under 24 federal ministries, including the Prime Minister Department in Malaysia. The data were analyzed under descriptive statistics, ordinal regression and structural equation model. Furthermore, standard diagnostic tests were also conducted to check the reliability of the data and models.

Among the factors of good governance, practices of strategic planning, audit and fraud control have statistically significant positive relationship with the practices of integrity in the public sector of Malaysia. Moreover, the practices of strategic alliance and fraud control significantly contribute to determine the integrity practices in the public sector of Malaysia. Therefore, the practices of strategic alliance, strategic planning, audit and fraud control must be given significant attention to improve the integrity system.

This study is an attempt to measure the relationship between the current practice status of good governance and that of integrity in the public sector of Malaysia. The findings of the study will help policymakers improve the reliability and efficiency of the public sector in Malaysia and in other countries.

Few issues in recent times have so provoked debate and dissention within the library field as has the concept of fees for user services. The issue has aroused the passions of our profession precisely because its roots and implications extend far beyond the confines of just one service discipline. Its reflection is mirrored in national debates about the proper spheres of the public and private sectors—in matters of information generation and distribution, certainly, but in a host of other social ramifications as well, amounting virtually to a debate about the most basic values which we have long assumed to constitute the very framework of our democratic and humanistic society.

While liberals agree that the best society is one that supports the equal exercise of personal liberty, there is little agreement among them on what policies best achieve this end. Conflicts within liberalism over the place of socially derived goals vis-à-vis personal liberty and autonomy create tension and skew public discourse on policy alternatives. In this article, I characterize the debate among dominant strands of liberal ideology and consider the effort of Charles Taylor to resolve these tensions. Finding his resolution unsatisfying, I explore the alternative conception offered by American pragmatism. I argue that liberal theories fail because they fall prey to the problem of principles-they attempt to justify axiomatic thinking rather than perpetuate society and culture. Pragmatism provides a justification for liberal public discourse as the best mechanism for constructing, evaluating and revising policies that support cultural adaptation to social, economic and technological contingencies.

This paper aims to investigate the extent to which accounting standards for social impact reporting are in the public interest. This study aims to explore what the public interest means for social impact reporting by charities; and assess the extent to which the accounting standardisation of social impact reporting supports the public interest so defined.

This study conducts a case study of how stakeholders in Australian charities conceptualise the public interest when discussing accounting standardisation. This paper distinguishes three concepts of the public interest from prior research, namely, aggregative, processual and common good. For each, this paper analyses the implications for accounting and how accountants serve the public interest, and how they align with stakeholder views.

Stakeholder views align with the aggregative and processual concepts of public interest, however this was contested and partial. Accounting standards for social impact reporting will only serve the public interest if they also capture and implement the common good approach.

Clarifying how key stakeholders interpret the public interest can help standard-setters and governments design (or withhold) accounting standards on social impact reporting. This paper also distinguishes different practical roles for accountants in this domain – information merchants, umpires or advocates, which each public interest concept implies.

This paper extends prior research on accounting for the public interest to social impact reporting. The paper empirically demonstrates the salience of the common good concept of public interest and demonstrates the diversity of views on the standardisation of social impact reporting by charities.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical framework for the assessment of subjective value of public goods. Public goods are not traded, so they do not have market prices, even if they may be of great importance for the well-being of citizens (e.g. green spaces, urban air). A procedure used to estimate the economic value of a public good is the contingent evaluation method: people are asked to state how much they are willing to pay to preserve or restore a public good. Many studies report that the subjective evaluation of public goods is affected by factors that, according to standard economics, should be irrelevant, such as the manipulation of frame and prime. On the other hand, factors that should be relevant, such as the magnitude of the expected benefit, are neglected. It appears that the evaluation of a public good cannot be reduced to a mere cost–benefit tradeoff evaluation. On the contrary, it seems that the subjective value of a public good is constructed. The authors argue that to accurately predict and describe how people valuate public goods, it is fundamental to study how people construct the associated mental representation.

This paper takes into account the cognitive and emotional aspects of the evaluation of public goods.

Subjective valuation of public goods is affected by irrelevant factors and is not affected by relevant factors.

This paper provides an accurate description and prediction of how people evaluate public goods.

The social implications of this paper include a better evaluation of public policies.

This paper is an original psychological perspective on the evaluation of public goods.