Question

Research the term, public goods, and post a scholarly definition of the term. As part of your discussion post, provide the source of public goods as well as two examples. Can public goods be offered by the private sector? Public sector? Defend your answer and cite your work as appropriate.

Answer 1

A good that can be consumed by one individual without reducing the availability of the good to another person and a good from which no individual can be excluded is referred to as Public good. Thus, the two main characteristic of the public goods are nonrivalrous and non excludable. Some of the examples of public goods include National defense, public parks and system sewers are all considered as public goods.

Since the marginal cost of these goods generally exceed the marginal benefit because of free riding nature of public goods, it has been observed that profit maximizing private sector do not provide this good and it is mainly public sector that offers public goods to people. National defense , system sewers and all other basic societal goods are offered to the public by the government and private sector involvement is nil in provisioning of public goods.