Public Economics - Essay Example

(a) According to Segura and Braun (2004, p.34), “a club good is a particular case of public good, which has the characteristics of excludability and non-rivalry (or partial non-rivalry, depending on the congestion).” It could never be a pure public good nor pure private good because it has the characteristic of least partly ‘rivalrousness’ and ‘excludability.’ Therefore, the usage of this good is exclusive for the club members (voluntary) and not for the good of the public, because if a good is already consumed by one of the members, the others will lose the opportunity, and the benefits are kept away from non-members (Murshed, 2010, p.153). The non-members are not allowed to assess, join and cooperate in the group because club members’ priority is to gain maximum utility over the certain goods.

In other words, club goods are not public goods but they are a ‘quasi-public’ or partial public goods, for they are only made available to two or more individuals, and restricted or protected from the outsiders consumption or non-members that did not contribute to the club’s creation (Brummer, 2008). . See for instance, a single individual will not have the capacity and the resources to build a club on its own, because it will shoulder the cost of the construction as well as the maintenance.

Also, even if he did, the enjoyment will be more appreciated if it is shared to two or more people as long as the number of members did not detract the enjoyment of the other group members. A theory of club goods is “intrinsically bound up with issues of inclusion and exclusion, and hence, how members are selected and non-members excluded. This implies some notion of discrimination” (Crawford, 2006, p.121). “The important point here is that many government services are closer to the characteristics of club goods (or at least they are impure public goods) compared to pure public goods, particularly at the local level” (Murshed & Tadjoeddin, 2008, p.7). One of these services is higher education or universities which can be seen as a club good particularly the rising of the student tuition fees (Sandler & Tschirhart, 1997, p.336). Education itself is a club good because whose benefits are non-rival and non-excludable, thus it can be shared without detracting the availability of opportunity to other individuals.

However, because of the rising student tuition fees poorer students would not be able to obtain the offered benefits of higher education, although it gives access to disadvantage students (Kershaw, 2010). This education that based on financial and not on academic ability is some kind of a restriction in the entry of poor bright students in an elite institutions or this can be considered discrimination. Withdrawal of the public funding would only make