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鈥淢ajority voting ensures that government will produce only those public goods for which benefits exceed costs.鈥 Discuss.

Short Answer

Expert verified

Majority voting sometimes leads to the production of goods whose overall benefits are less than the costs or rejection of goods whose overall benefits are more than the costs due to the majority supporting or rejecting the production of the goods, respectively.

Step by step solution

01

Meaning of majority voting 

Majority voting is a technique adopted by the government to know people's preference for the public good. In this, people vote in either 鈥測es鈥 or 鈥渘o.鈥

People vote according to their self-interest so that their economic welfare can enhance, that is, a person will say yes to producing a good if the benefit received by him/her exceeds the amount he/she is paying as a cost of production.

02

Explanation for the statement

In practice, majority voting might not lead to an increase in the overall economic welfare. Hence, there is a possibility that a public good is wrongly accepted or rejected through majority voting. This can be explained using an example.

Suppose there are three people in the society, say A, B, and C, who have to decide if a particular public good should be produced or not. The taxes are used to fund the production. The government charges $200 as a tax from each person, so the total cost is $500. A鈥檚 benefits are $600, B鈥檚 are $150, and C鈥檚 are $100. The total benefit from producing the good is $850.

Here, the total benefit ($850) exceeds the total cost ($600), but two out of three people would say no to this public good as their own benefits are less than the cost they are paying. Hence, the overall economic welfare is not considered, and the production of the said public good will not happen.

Thus, the statement is false.

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Most popular questions from this chapter

Explain how affirmative and negative majority votes can sometimes lead to inefficient allocations of resources to public goods. Use Figures 5.2a and 5.2b to show how society might be better off if Garcia were allowed to buy votes.

Suppose that total costs (TC) double for each project listed in Table 5.2. Which project(s) is (are) now economically viable?

a. Plan A only

b. Plans C and D only

c. Plans B and C

d. Plans A and B only

Plan
Total cost of project (\()
Marginal cost (\))
Total Benefit
Marginal Benefit
Net Benefit (TB-TC)
No new construction
0-0--
A: Widen existing highways
100-200--
B: New 2-lane highways
280-350--
C: New 4-lane highways
480-470--
D: New 6-lane highways
1240-580--

Explain the paradox of voting through reference to the accompanying table, which shows the ranking of three public goods by voters Colbert, Fallon, and Kimmel


Ranking
Public good
Colbert
Fallon
Kimmel
Courthouse
2nd Choice
1st Choice
3rd Choice
School
3rd Choice
2nd Choice
1st Choice
Park
1st Choice
3rd Choice
2nd Choice

Does traditional one-person-one-vote (1p1v) majority voting allow voters to directly express differences in strengths of preference? Does quadratic voting do any better? Discuss the differences and then explain which system you prefer, and why.

Jean-Baptiste Colbert was the Minister of Finance under King Louis XIV of France. He famously observed, "The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing." How does his comment relate to the special-interest effect?

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