Would Economic Democracy Decrease the Amount of Public Bads? A Comment
评论Roemer关于不平等和股权结构如何影响企业生产公共坏品水平的分析，指出富裕阶层因享受公共坏品收益却只承担人均成本而可能搭便车，但边际效用递减可能削弱这一论点。
John Roemer (1993) has recently provided an interesting analysis of how inequality and pattern of share ownership influence production decisions of firms when these have undesirable side-effects on public. He argues that both large shareholders and well-paid prefer production which results in a relatively high level of public bads. Hence, measures to equalize incomes or shareholding will reduce level of public bads. His argument depends on fact that affluent receive an above average fraction of arising from creation of public bads, but bear only a per capita fraction of resulting social costs. Hence they can free ride by making others bear most of these costs. He qualifies this appealing argument by pointing out that affluent may also have a low marginal utility of and hence be willing to pay more in absolute terms to avoid public bads. However, according to Roemer, this qualification does not seriously affect his basic argument, which he claims is valid even when the marginal utility of falls rapidly with income