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Extends Mäler′s notion of weak complementarity between a private good and a public good to non‐homothetic demand functions which can be exactly aggregated. Aggregate demand functions depending on private prices, public good quantities and income distribution statistics can then be used to recover the private individual demand functions which reveal an individual′s willingness to pay for public goods.

The paper offers a new view of the role of state based on recognition of the economic ability of the state as a separate factor of production. Recognizing the state’s economic ability is as a fifth factor of production and correspondingly gives indirect taxes the status of factor income as state profit. Direct taxes play two roles: they fund expenditure that is necessary for the production of public goods and at the same time they are in effect the latter’s price. If we were to apply the mechanism of producing and purchasing private goods to public goods, direct taxes would be replaced by the state loans that are non‐repayable, but yield interest, or by irretrievable loans with computed interest. In this case, which is illustrated by the budgetary equations in the model of an economy “without taxes”, indirect taxes become analogous to state profit and direct taxes are replaced by irretrievable loans with computed interest.

The purpose of this paper is to formulate a model for waqf financing of public goods and mixed public goods in Malaysia which constitute the country’s federal government expenditures. The model is built on the basis of understanding the concept of waqf, learning from waqf institutions of the past and present and addressing specific Malaysian waqf issues.

This study uses both primary and secondary data. The primary data originate from semi-structured interviews of waqf academicians from the Islamic economics and Islamic finance fields, waqf government officials and private sector institutions that are involved in waqf management. The secondary data come from the Malaysian Federal Constitution, law enactments, books, e-books, bulletins, journals, conference proceedings, government reports and websites.

By synthesizing the data, it is found that return from cash waqf investment in unit trust can be used to finance 11 items of federal government expenditures. The overall process can be managed by Yayasan Waqaf Malaysia through a collaboration with an Islamic unit trust firm.

This research shows how waqf can practically assist the Malaysian federal government in financing public goods and mixed public goods. It indirectly shows an alternative source of financing for these goods. Other economies can also learn and adapt from the model developed in this paper.

This paper attempts to revive the function of waqf as a provider of public goods and mixed public goods from Islamic history. Inadvertently, this paper also introduces waqf as a possible fiscal tool.

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 is devoted to the question of what motivates man in his pursuit of economic activities. Particular attention is given to the notion that economic activities of individuals may not be motivated by their self‐interest alone.

Using literary analysis, the paper first reconsiders the role of self‐interest and non‐selfish motives in the historical schools. Then it is demonstrated that at least some non‐selfish motives were incorporated in the voluntary exchange theory of public economy. Next it is shown that during the evolution of the theory of public goods these non‐selfish motives were lost and that the modern theory of public goods rests entirely on the self‐interest hypothesis. However, over the last two decades results of public goods experiments have cast considerable doubt on the pure self‐interest hypothesis.

A major finding of this paper is that several non‐selfish motives of man that show up in recent public goods experiments were already discussed by representatives of the historical schools.

An agenda for future research on the topic is sketched in the final section.

Practical implications include that the allocation of many goods, not just public goods, may improve if agents pay more attention to non‐selfish motives of man.

The paper adds to the existing body of related writings by linking developments in the evolution of theory of public goods, in particular recent findings from public goods experiments, to a specific aspect already advocated by representatives of the historical schools, that is, the notion that man in his pursuit of economic activities is not motivated by his self‐interest alone. To this extent, the paper is of interest for researchers working on public goods theory, experimental economics and the history of economic thought.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how different types of the village relationship influence different types of public goods provision in rural China.

The three components (clan-based relationship, neighborhood relationship and external relationship) were derived by employing factor analysis. The simultaneous discrete choice model was used to estimate the influence of these components on public goods provision, using the survey data from the China Household Income Project conducted in 2007.

The findings indicate that considering different components of village relationship allows for a better understanding of the public good provision. The results indicate that the neighborhood relationship has a significantly positive effect on rural public goods provision, particularly on water conservancy and irrigation, while the external relationship has a significantly positive effect on all types of public goods.

Local public goods provision is the core of the new rural construction in China. These findings imply that relationship in villages plays a vital role in the provision of public goods and is necessary in the construction of the new harmonious countryside in China. The results also have implications for rural public goods provision in other developing countries.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to quantitatively model the impact of different relationships on public goods provision at the rural level. A consideration of the different components in village relationship allows for a more precise understanding of the pubic goods provision in the village.

Introduction − Covid-19, which first emerged in Wuhan, People’s Republic of China, in January 2020, with an unknown source, spread to all countries of the world very quickly and caused the death of over two million people world-wide. This ever-increasing global need for health care has created a radical transformation in terms of not only in health care, but also in all public services. Transportation services for the transfer of patients to health institutions, education services due to the dangers of face-to-face training, justice services due to the postponement of non-urgent court proceedings, security services in terms of restriction sanctions and all public services in general due to the disruption of access to public services due to flexible working hours applied to public personnel has entered into an unplanned provision.

Purpose: The aim of this chapter is to identify the problems that arise in the provision of public goods and services due to the global epidemic of Covid-19, and to bring a new interpretation to the theoretical discussions about the optimal delivery level of public services when there is a situation of communicable disease.

Methodology: The principles of public goods and service provision of G20 countries, Covid-19 mortality rates, indicators of the well-being of healthcare delivery such as the number of bed and personnel, the type and number of devices used to diagnose the Covid disease, and the public service restrictions taken to eliminate Covid-19, have been evaluated by employing descriptive analysis. In order to prevent income and advanced levels from becoming distinctive features, G20 countries with similar income and development levels were selected for this research.

Findings: Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a distortion in the preference of provision of almost all public goods, and it has been observed that the delivery level of public services affects each other since all are linked like a chain. Failure to achieve what is expected from international organizations, which should be in a regulatory position in this regard, has increased concerns about the optimal presentation level of all public goods, especially health, in the future. As long as there is a global pandemic and countries do not take effective measures, a bad second best position that is far from optimal results but provides that instant solutions.

This paper aims to apply internalization theory in the context of economic efficiency-driven institutions interacting with societal institutions that pursue broader goals.

The analysis builds upon Buckley and Boddewyn’s (2015, this issue) recent work on the perceived need for multinational enterprises (MNEs) to supply public goods outside of their sphere of technical competences. This paper proposes a more restrictive approach: external markets will only be internalized if, on balance, the efficiency benefits of internalization outweigh its costs at the firm level, in line with orthodox internalization theory.

MNEs replacing the activities of failing (or even absent) public sector institutions is a business phenomenon commonly observed in less developed economies. However, positive distributional effects and societal externalities without the required efficiency benefits at the firm level are insufficient for MNEs’ supply to occur.

Managerial decisions in the internalization sphere will be guided by the transactional characteristics of the MNEs’ firm-specific advantages (FSAs) and the requisite complementary resources held by host country economic actors. Internalization theory thinking suggests applying various, specific principles to assess in a comparative institutional fashion whether “diversification” into supplying public goods will serve the MNEs’ efficiency goals, namely, the “cost of entry” test, the “better-off” test and the “value capture” test.

Internalization theory provides a solid, efficiency-driven rationale to guide MNE choices on which activities the firm will conduct internally. The nature of the MNEs FSAs and the most efficient, feasible option to bundle firm-level resources and locally held resources in host environments are critical to these choices.

This study aims to examine dynamic interactions among economic growth, geography and the housing market with public goods financed by the government. A general dynamic equilibrium model of an isolated economy with economic geography, local public goods and capital accumulation is to be constructed. The economy has three sectors, supplying industrial goods, housing, and local public goods. The model synthesizes the main ideas in neoclassical growth theory, the Alonso urban model, and the Muth housing model in an alternative framework to the traditional growth theory.

The model is based on the neoclassical growth theory with an alternative approach to household behavior. The paper shows how to solve the dynamics of the economic system and simulate the model to demonstrate dynamic interactions among economic growth, housing market, residential distribution and public goods over time and space.

The paper simulates equilibrium and motion of the spatial economy with Cobb‐Douglas production and utility functions. The simulation demonstrates, for example, that, as the tax rate on the land income is increased, the total capital stocks and the stocks employed by the three sectors are increased, the rate of interest falls and the output of the industrial sector and the wage rate are increased, the land devoted to local public goods falls and the land rent and housing rent rise over space, the consumption level of the industrial goods and the total expenditures on the public goods are increased.

The paper provides some possible implications of the model for complicated consequences of government policy over time and space. In particular, the paper shows that a change in government policy not only has a macroeconomic impact over time, but also affects the economic geography of the national economy.

The paper offers insights into the linkage among growth, national public policies and economic geography.

This paper aims to explain a conceptual background for an emerging agrarian discourse in corporate social responsibility (CSR) research. Socially responsible provision of public goods is examined by encompassing a shift in paradigms and approaches from the industrial phase of development with economic/profit dimension, emphasized by the theory of public goods, to the post-industrial phase of development with moral dimension, empowered by knowledge-based economy, sustainability and further development of the theory of CSR.

The paper sets the conceptual foundations for the holistic study of the two confronting conceptions of public goods and CSR by discussing their interconnectivity and distinctions of relevant approaches in the intersecting classical economics and sustainability fields.

Research results show that provision of public goods is still mainly debated from the classical economic paradigms. Nevertheless, author give promising evidence for the possibility to implement holistic studies on confronting economic and moral dimensions in the field of socially responsible provisions of public goods with use of appropriate theories and approaches from both paradigms depending on the context.

This paper presents exceptionally theoretical insights and sophisticated explanations of the background of emerging agrarian discourse in CSR. It gives implications for further research in the field of socially responsible provision of public goods both from theoretical and empirical point of view.

The study proves the enlarged scope of the theory of CSR by conceptualizing the newly emerging discourse in the field, which has been absent from theoretical to empirical CSR research in agriculture.