Public good

In economics, a public good is a good that is hard or even impossible to produce for private profit, because the market fails to account for its large beneficial externalities. By definition, a public good possesses two properties:

Subtypes of Public Goods

One of the most common ways of looking at goods in economics, illustrated in the table below, is the classic division based on:

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• whether there is competition involved in obtaining a given good
• whether it is possible to exclude a person from consumption of a given good

Sometimes, club and common goods are included in the broad definition of public goods. There are always some goods that can be argued to belong in more than one of the above categories.

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Common goods should not be confused with another subtype of public goods: the collective goods (also known as social goods), which are defined as goods that could be delivered as private goods, but are delivered instead by the government for various reasons (usually social policy).

Related Topics:
Collective good - Social goods - Social policy

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