Public Good

This paper outlines the ethical and organisational risks for community and other public good organisations of accepting funding from gambling industry sources. Aspects of this moral jeopardy include the ethics of benefiting from the suffering of others as well as impacts on an organisation's reputation, governance, and internal relationships. After 50 years of unethical practice by tobacco manufacturers, community agencies involved with tobacco control are now actively challenging organisations that continue to pursue these links. This readiness to question has not yet been extended to gambling, but with efforts at improving ethical awareness, people in key agencies can be assisted in challenging these relationships. The different arrangements for dispersing charitable funds from gambling are examined and we conclude that none of them are free from moral jeopardy. The paper finishes with recommendations on ways organisations might participate in promoting low moral jeopardy environments.

The entry into force of the World Trade Organization (WTO) TRIPS Agreement in 1995 transformed the international intellectual property system. The harmonization of basic intellectual property standards has operated to protect investment in innovation, limiting risks from unjustified ‘free riding’. Yet these same harmonized IP standards sharply curtailed the traditional capacity of suppliers of public goods, such as health care and nutrition, to address priority needs of less affluent members of society, particularly in (but not limited to) developing countries. In the Doha Declaration, the Waiver Decision of 30 August 2003 and the Article 31bis Protocol of Amendment, stakeholders concerned with re-opening policy space for the supply of newer pharmaceutical products pushed back against restrictive elements of the TRIPS Agreement.Governments around the world are in the process of deciding whether to ratify and accept the Article 31bis Amendment. Based on their Study for the Internatio...

In assessing the relationship between self-esteem and in-group/outgroup evaluations, this study examined whether self-esteem is better measured at a collective (collective self-esteem [CSE]) than a personal level (personal self-esteem [PSE]). It was expected that subjects high in CSE would engage in more in-group favoritism (measured by in-group evaluations), whereas those low in CSE would engage in more outgroup derogation (measured by outgroup evaluations). No effect for PSE was predicted. Furthermore, the study explored whether perceptions of collective efficacy may underlie this relationship. Subjects played a public goods task. The in-group's outcome was compared to the outcome of other relevant outgroups, enhancing pressures towards intergroup differentiation. Consistent with the predictions, subjects high in CSE evaluated in-group members more positively than those in low CSE (i.e., in-group favoritism), whereas subjects low in CSE evaluated outgroup members more negatively than those high in CSE (i.e., outgroup derogation). Also in line with our predictions, no effect for PSE was found. Perceptions of collective efficacy appeared to be a mediator of the effect of CSE.

There is a conflict between civil society's larger purpose and the self-interest of professionals who work in the sector. That conflict can only be resolved if developmental professionals strive to become irrelevant by enabling the dispossessed to take control of voicing their own interests and demanding their rights.This brief excerpt from a keynote address is intended as a cautionary note for civil society, which can develop a vested interest in the very miseries it seeks to abolish.

This paper argues that, in models with heterogeneous agents, the concept of the marginal cost of public funds (MCPF) will only be useful if it is compared with an analogous concept for the benefit side. The MCPF does not assume a unique value and is not particularly illuminating in and out of itself. Also gone is the benchmark status of MCPF = 1. Turning to the provision of public goods, using a mechanism design approach, the paper constructs a two-stage proof for Kaplow's [Kaplow, L., 1996. The optimal supply of public goods and the distortionary cost of taxation. National Tax Journal 49, 513-533.] proposition concerning the birrelevanceQ of labor supply and distributional concerns in public good provision. This highlights the two fundamental ingredients for his result. First, the provision of public goods per se, when it satisfies the Samuelson's rule, is only potentially Pareto-improving. Second, the actual Pareto improvement will materialize when, or if, one reforms the income tax structure. If the reform is not forthcoming, the decision on public goods provision must rely on redistributional concerns. Finally, the paper generalizes Broadway and Keen's [Boadway, R., Keen, M., 1993. Public goods, self-selection and optimal income taxation. International Economic Review 34, 463-478.] result to a model with many types of agents, many private goods and without making any assumptions regarding which self-selection constraints are or are not binding.

As a famous game in the domain of game theory, both pervasive empirical studies as well as intensive theoretical analysis have been conducted and performed worldwide to research different public goods game scenarios. At the same time, computer game simulators are utilized widely for better research of game theory by providing easy but powerful visualization and statistics functionalities. However, although solutions of public goods game have been widely discussed with empirical studies or theoretical approaches, no computational and automatic simulation approaches has been adopted. For this reason, we have implemented a computer simulator with reinforcement learning agents module for public goods game, and we have utilized this simulator to further study the characteristics of public goods game. Furthermore, in this article, we have also presented a bunch of interesting experimental results with respect to the strategies that agents used and the profits they earned.

Governments are charged with monitoring citizens ’ compliance with prescribed behavioral stan-dards and punishing noncompliance. Flaws in information available to enforcing agents, however, may lead to subsequent enforcement errors, eroding government authority and undermining incen-tives for compliance. We explore these concepts in a laboratory experiment. A “monitor ” makes punishment decisions after receiving noisy signals about individuals ’ choices to contribute to a pub-lic good. We find that the possibility of wrongly accusatory signals has a more deleterious effect on contribution levels than the possibility of wrongly exculpatory signals, contrary to a rational-choice benchmark model predicting equal effects. We trace this across-treatment difference to a “false pos-itives trap”: when members of a largely compliant population are sometimes incorrectly accused, some will be unjustly punished if enforcement power is employed, but non-compliant individuals will escape punishme...

The analysis of state failure and the policy debate have been driven by two very different underlying views of what the state does. The first, which we call the “servicedelivery” view says the role of the state is to provide law and order, stable property rights, key public goods and welfarist redistributions. In failing to provide these, state failure contributes to economic under-performance and poverty. State failure of this type is in turn related to an inter-dependent constellation of governance failures including corruption and rent-seeking, distortions in markets and the absence of democracy. All of these need to be addressed to focus the state on its core service-delivery tasks. The second locates the developing country state in the context of “social transformation”: the dramatic transition these countries are going through as traditional production systems collapse and a capitalist economy begins to emerge. Dynamic transformation states have heavily intervened in property ...

One influential view blames Nigeria's failure to translate its oil wealth into national prosperity on the country's social, political and institutional fragmentation, which provides little incentive for technocratic planning or policies based on shared growth or the public good. This article explores an alternative theory: that at certain periods Nigeria's development trajectory has in fact been influenced by technocratic planning and that the strategy followed typically neglected agriculture, subjected markets to excessive regulation, and involved exchange-rate policies which discouraged exports. These propositions are argued with reference to the contrasting case of Indonesia, which has pursued market-friendly, exportpromoting policies, and a pronounced rural-agricultural bias in development spending. Five possible areas of explanation for the contrast are explored: differences in the political interests of the policy-makers, in their social origins, in their intellectual backgrounds, in their experience of economic management and mismanagement, and in their exposure to inclusive, egalitarian political movements.

The idea of buying carbon offsets to compensate for one's CO2 emissions has been intensively debated in leaders to editors, statements and reports from environmental organizations. Critics' have claimed that buying carbon offsets is immoral because it allows buyers to pay others to deal with the problem rather than changing their harmful behavior. In this paper, we use rational analysis from moral philosophical theory to analyze moral beliefs about carbon offsetting. We apply the Kantian framework of universalizing maxims and find no support for that CO2 emissions per se are morally impermissible while emissions, exceeding a sustainable level per capita, are morally impermissible. We demonstrate that the individual has a moral duty to buy offsets that are effective on a stock basis (S-effectiveness), for his excess emissions. S-effectiveness is a stronger condition than what carbon offsets available on existing carbon markets fulfill.

Les forêtstropicales rendentdes services environnementaux àlaplanètee ntière,mais dépendent d'Étatss ouverains,quil es utilisentavantt out comme des ressources économiques etcomme réserves foncières. L'exploitation non régulée dubois d'oeuvre estplusr entable pourl es exploitantsq uecelle pratiquée dans le cadre d'unaménagementetd'une gestion certifiée. La conversion des terres forestières en pâturages ouen espaces artificialisés estplusi ntéressante financièrementquel 'exploitation durable,et afortiori quel ac onservation,c omptetenudes systèmes dep rixetder émunération existants. Dans les avancéesdifficiles vers lac onstitution d'unh ypothétique" régime international" del 'environnement,laquestion des forêtsr eprésente unp ointdef riction Nord-Sudoùconvergentpratiquementt ousl es problèmes dudéveloppement durable :tensions entre lac roissanceé conomiquee tlapréservation del ab iodiversité,tension entre le temps long del arégénération des écosystèmes etles horizons financiers,incertitudes ur les droitsdep ropriété,incertitudes etpolémiques surl econtenumême del anotion dedura-bilité… Ainsi,l'absenced'autorités upranationale reconnuecompliquel 'ambition dep arvenir à une gestion internationale susceptible dem aintenir des services environnementaux globaux que rendentles écosystèmes forestiers. Dufaitducaractère globaldel eurs fonctions etservices,les forêtss ontsouventqualifiées de" patrimoine commun" del 'humanitéo u,d em anière plus savante,d e" bien publicmondial" (BPM). Considérer les forêtsm ondiales comme relevantdel a catégorie des BPM ne seraitpass ans conséquences url ep landes relations internationales. Cela constituerait,notamment,unargumenten faveurd'une convention internationale spécifique.

Agriculture provides the main support for Zambia’s rural economy, and because of this, growth in the agricultural sector is the clearest avenue through which poverty reduction can be achieved in Zambia. Yet despite widespread recognition of the strong connection between agricultural development and poverty reduction, there is continuing under-provision of public goods investments for over a decade. Zambia’s primary policy objective of achieving accelerated growth and competitiveness in the agricultural sector cannot be achieved unless adequate public resources are committed towards catalyzing the desired growth. Strong evidence from southern Africa as well as throughout the world indicates that long–term public investment in research and development, extension services, rural infrastructure, and food safety and quality systems have high pay-offs and are among the most important drivers of agricultural growth and competitiveness. Agricultural-led development has been identified by Af...

Pecorino (1998) models tariff lobbying in a repeated game and finds that cooperation can be maintained in a large group, even though tariff lobbying provides a rival public good to interest group members. We add small fixed costs of participation to this model and find that cooperation must break down in large groups. By contrast, if a fully rival public good directly enters the utility function, then cooperation is possible in large groups, even with small participation costs. Thus, we find only partial support for Olson's (1965) proposition that collective action must break down in large groups.

The objective of this paper is to develop conditions for global multivariate comparative risk aversion in the presence of uninsurable, or background, risks, and thus generalize Kihlstrom and Mirman [1974] and Karni [1979,1989]. We analyze von Neumann-Morgenstern (VNM) utility functions as well as smooth preference functionals which are nonlinear in distribution but locally linear in probabilities. In each case we provide an economic application which illustrates how our theorems can be used. We analyze a risk sharing, a portfolio choice, and a labor supply problem for VNM utility functions, and the optimal allocation of effort to risky technologies in the presence of a random supply (or quality) of a public good for nonlinear preference functionals. We consider the case where the random variables are mean-independent as well as the case where they are independent. In the labor supply application for VNM utility functions, we show that if the two risks are independent, the comparative statics effect of greater risk aversion on labor supply in the presence of a background non-wage income risk is determined by a monotonic relationship between labor supply and the wage rate under certainty. That is, we extend the applicability of the Diamond-Stiglitz [1974]-Kihlstrom-Mirman [1974] single-crossing property to the case where an independent background risk is present.

A dynamic general equilibrium model of a small open economy specialized in producing tourism services is presented. The tourism package is a bundle of attributes provided by firms, the government and the natural environment. Investment in accommodation increases the number of visitors but also congests public goods and reduces environmental quality. The model is used to determine the conditions for the existence of a long-term double dividend. These conditions depend on both the initial level of environmental quality and the responsiveness of the tourism price to marginal changes in environmental and accommodation quality and congestion of public goods.

We use a simple balanced budget contest to collect taxes on a private good in order to finance a pure public good. We show that—with an appropriately chosen structure of winning probabilities—this contest can provide the public good efficiently and without distorting private consumption. We provide extensions to multiple public goods and private taxation sources, asymmetric preferences, and show the mechanism's robustness across these settings. (JEL C7, D7.

In this paper we treat instructions as an experimental variable. Using a public good game, we study how the instructions' format affects the participants' understanding of the experiment, their speed of play and their experimental behavior. We show that longer instructions do not significantly improve the subjects' understanding of the experiment; onscreen instructions shorten average decision times with respect to on-paper instructions, and requiring forced inputs reduces waiting times, in particular for the slowest subjects. Consistent with cognitive load theory, we find that short, on-screen instructions which require forced inputs improve on subjects' comprehension and familiarity with the experimental task, and they contribute to reduce both decision and waiting times without affecting the overall pattern of contributions.

The objective of the present paper is to investigate the robustness of the well-known result that pre-set default options determine people's choices. We do so by conducting a field experiment among environmental economists attending a large international conference on environmental economics. The participants were, at the time of registration, randomly allocated to different treatments related to carbon offsetting. What differs from earlier default studies is that our subjects have good knowledge about the good at hand. We investigate whether the choices of these experienced individuals are affected by a pre-set default option, and we also study the effect of a treatment with no pre-set default option. Our results, together with previous findings, indicate that the effect of a default option attenuates with experience.

Around 100years ago, when Crown land in the interior of northern Sweden was privatized, part of the forest land was set aside as forest commons. Today, there are 33 such forest commons jointly managed and owned in common mainly by private forest owners. The forest commons may be looked upon as a means by which the state controls the production

This paper empirically illustrates the difference between a standard economic impact analysis (EIA) and a cost-benefit analysis (CBA). The EIA was conducted using an existing (input-output) I-O model (STEAM). The benefit side of the CBA included non-local visitor spending, the revenue of the local organizing committee (LOC), the consumer surplus, and public good value of the sport event for the local residents. The cost side of the CBA was estimated based on the opportunity costs related to the construction of the stadium (including labor costs and the cost of borrowing), imports, and ticket sales to locals. The EIA indicated that the 2005 Pan-American Junior Athletic Championships generated a net increase in economic activity in the city of $5.6 million. The CBA showed a negative net benefit of $2.4 million. Both methods presented challenges and limitations, but CBA has the distinct advantage that it identifies the net benefits associated with hosting a sport event.

A Japanese General Social Survey is used to re-examine how voluntary giving is associated with inequality aversion, and how the relationship differs between high- and low-income groups. This paper also investigates how social capital influences that relationship. The key findings are that (1) the level of voluntary giving increases with inequality aversion for high-income groups, but not for low-income groups, and (2) social capital accumulated in the respondent’s residential area reinforces the positive influence of inequality aversion on voluntary giving for high-income groups only.

Prior research suggests that consumers evaluate firms more negatively if they attribute the firm's business practices to firm-serving motivations rather than to motivations that serve the public good. We propose an alternative hypothesis: Firm-serving attributions lower evaluation of the firm only when they are inconsistent with the firm's expressed motive. As such, the negative effect of consumer skepticism regarding a firm's motives can be inhibited by public acknowledgment of the strategic benefits to the firm. The power of this inhibition procedure was demonstrated in an experiment in which we manipulated the salience of firm-serving benefits and the firm's publicly stated motive. Consumer evaluation of the sponsoring firm was lowest in conditions when firm-serving benefits were salient and the firm outwardly stated purely public-serving motives. This experiment also revealed that the potential negative effects of skepticism were the most pronounced when individuals engaged in causal attribution prior to company evaluation. Finally, in this study we measured the different effects on attribution and evaluation of 2 distinct forms of skepticism: situational skepticism, which is a momentary state of distrust of an actor's motivations, and dispositional skepticism, which is an individual's ongoing tendency to be suspicious of other people's motives.

Biological invasions are an economic problem. Invasions are typically the intended or unintended consequence of economic activity. They impose real costs on society, and the risk of invasion depends on human behaviour. Effective control of invasions depends on using the right economic instruments and developing the right institutions. The problem has two special features. The first is that the risks of invasions may be very low, but the potential costs are high. Since they are not reflected in market prices, they are typically ignored. The second is that the control of potentially invasive species is a public good of the 'weakest link' variety. Both features indicate a precautionary approach. To deal with the first, I recommend the use of environmental assurance bonds to cover society against the risks of invasive species whilst providing importers with an incentive to research the consequences of their actions. To deal with the second I recommend the development of an institution similar to the Atlanta Centre for Disease Control to provide the information and technical advice required if governments are to act, and a central organisation (involving UNEP, UNDP and the World Bank) to strengthen eradication, control of mitigation campaigns in those countries least able to deal with invasive species.

Increasing emphasis is being placed in forest policies to deliver public goods such as biodiversity, recreation, landscape and carbon sequestration, alongside timber production. In light of this, it is important to understand how woodland owners themselves perceive their role in delivering these multiple benefits. With up to 80% of woodland in some areas in England in private ownership, and with an increasing number of owners with non-financial objectives for their woodland, the private sector may offer opportunities for delivering public goods. The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceptions and attitudes of private woodland owners to multifunctional woodland management in three study areas in England: Cornwall, the Lake District and the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). Q Methodology was used to identify four perspectives of woodland ownership and management, which can be described as: the Hobby Conservationist; the Individualist; the Custodian and the Multifunctional Owner. The implications of the findings for forest policy are discussed.

A specific risk of this period is liquidity risk arised from inexistence of adecquted management. A new risk arises from financial measures against the effects of economic worldwide crisis. These measures are dedicated to mitigate the crisis risks but, they may become a real challange for companies and individuals caused by new competence needed. As a conclusion, the topic of

Success of eco-labeling schemes, broadly defined, varies among products and across countries. Based on a simple theoretical framework, we show that the nature of environmental attributes among products (i.e., private versus public) and the consumer type (i.e., egoist versus altruist) shape the overall performance of such schemes. In addition, we demonstrate that altruistic consumers exhibiting a too high willingness to pay for the eco-labeled product can inadvertently prevent egoistic consumers from purchasing it, leading to a sub-optimal outcome in terms of environmental performance. Several policy and managerial implications are drawn.

We investigate how a group of players might cooperate with each other within the setting of a non-cooperative game. We pursue two notions of partial cooperative equilibria that follow a modification of Nash's best response rationality rather than a core-like approach. Partial cooperative Nash equilibrium treats non-cooperative players and the coalition of cooperators symmetrically, while the notion of partial cooperative leadership equilibrium assumes that the group of cooperators has a first-mover advantage. We prove existence theorems for both types of equilibria.

This article argues that the neoliberal renaissance of the 1980s marketized education, with distinctly negative social consequences. We examine the emergence and promotion of a national-level discourse that positioned schools in the service of the economy. Based on ethnographic research conducted in North Carolina, we then show how local growth elite utilized this discourse to further their own race and class interests to the exclusion and detriment of poorer, African American parents and students. We suggest that ethnographic studies of policy formation help to socially and historically contextualize contemporary debates and denaturalize unwarranted assumptions about the public good.

We analyse the possibility of successful industry self-regulation in terms of the strategic interactions between industry members and government. In particular, this paper presents a game-theoretic typology of generic self-regulatory scenarios and evaluates these in terms of the resulting likelihood of collective compliance. Examples for the scenarios are discussed and conclusions for corporate and public policy offered.

It can be argued that apart from the bifurcation of ‘is’ (Sein) and ‘ought’ (Sollen), one of the most overstated and misleading dichotomies of modern political, legal and ethical thought is the opposition of common and private good. I must admit this is a large claim. In addition, in the present paper I shall give only a very short and sketchy explanation of it. In doing so I will rely mainly on Péter Takács’ classic study on the common good, and on the critique of ‘atomist’ ontology and methodological individualism formulated by such eminent communitarian political philosophers as Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre. Thirdly, with some reservations, I will also draw on the conceptual framework offered by Fred D. Miller’s analysis of Aristotle’s
Politics.

Political secularism takes many forms but a fundamental distinction is between radical and moderate kinds. The latter is a genuine secularism and not just a failure to take secularism to its logical conclusion. The failure to appreciate this obscures the secularism that exists in western Europe. Namely, an accommodation of organised religion which sees it as a potential public good or national resource (not just a private benefit), which the state can in some circumstances assist to realise—even through an ‘established’ church. I adumbrate five types of reasons the state might be interested in religion: truth, danger, utility, identity and respect. The challenge facing such secularism today is whether it can be pluralised or multiculturalised, in particular whether it can accommodate Muslims. A ground for optimism is the respect that some people, especially some Muslims, have for religions other than their own.

This analysis of the Danish organic food market investigates the relationships between household purchasing behaviour and stated values, motives and concerns. Attention is also given to the importance of sales channels and the functions of labelling. We identify the specific attributes that induce consumers to purchase organic foods, distinguishing 'private' from 'public' valued attributes. Using household level information on stated values and concerns and data regarding real market purchases for approximately 2000 households during the period 1997-2001, the declared values and actual market behaviour of the same households are compared. We find that household propensity to purchase organic foods increases significantly with the declared importance accorded to 'private good' attributes, leading to the conclusion that these values determine the actual level of market participation. The weight that households assign to public good attributes does not contribute significantly to the explanation of household organic budget share. However, since almost all consumers who purchase organic foods do in fact acknowledge 'public good' attributes, these values may also constitute a prerequisite for purchasing organic products.

... They cannot be bargained or traded as can capital, votes, or official positions. ... But in practice such notions are often placed in their social contexts ... preeminent in a range of 'rights' movements in the twentieth century" (Capek 1993:8). Inclusion into full status within the political com ...

It has been the traditional belief that profits and ethics are at odds with each other in the world of business. Corporate governance appears to be a hindrance or a drag on profit maximization. This work shows that moral codes, public interest and social values pose no threat to profit maximization of any firm. It is demonstrated with the illustration of transfer pricing and public goods-based economy that profits and ethics are quite compatible within the strait jacket of societal norms and corporate goals.

Increasing private wildfire risk mitigation is an important part of the larger forest restoration policy challenge. Data from an economic experiment are used to evaluate the effectiveness of providing fuel treatments on public land adjacent to private land to induce private wildfire risk mitigation. Results show evidence of "crowding out"

The author applies the theory of public goods on donated blood. Donated blood may be taken as a 'public good' like water and air, police and firebrigades. This theory tends to imply a preference for voluntary donation and bloodbanking by public and nonprofit organisations as well as for low cost supply. An additional commercial supply of blood nevertheless is, welcome. Quality as well as quantity of blood depend first of all on the willingness to donate and the honesty of the donors about their health. An altruistic motivation alone, which is not triggered by some material incentive, does not in all systems guarantee a sufficient quantity of safe blood. Both the altruistic as well as the reembursement-oriented donor's willingness and honesty have to be guarded by sound practice in bloodbanking and adequate public control within a legal framework which reflects the vital role of blood supply. A legal implementation of product liability will certainly be an important instrument in this field.

"Throughout the course of its history, Thailand has thrived on international commerce and interacting with global forces. During the past two centuries, Thailand has faced a progression of events threatening its self-definition requiring very conscious educational and cultural reform policies to offset the advances of globalized movements. The first series of reforms began to take place in the late 19th century and served as a defensive measure to fend off the onslaught of European colonial activity and to unify a disjointed society. This reform was used to primarily centralize the cultural and religious authority and power of the kingdom, while assimilating the local/regional/rural areas through education. The most recent reform in late 20th century was devised to fend off global market forces and to unify a disjointed society through a strategy of decentralization and educational reform. Both these reforms were countered with strong resistance movements that reflect a resistance heritage that aspires to civil society.

This chapter examines some of the similarities of the past two eras of globalization in Thailand, their reforms, and how assimilation and extensive revisions to the cultural and spiritual elements of Thai society have provoked resistance movements. This chapter also suggests that the current alternative education movement in Thailand belongs to this heritage of resistance to national and international hegemony and envisions an inclusive and moral society that is attempting to prepare its citizens for a future in the globalized world. In that Thailand has invaluable experience dealing with the global and maintaining its independence, its story may be instructive for other developing countries as globalization will surely continue its unfoldment as will humanity’s movement toward a civic world."

Land reclamation of derelict landscapes, until in recent times, was a rare experience, especially in developing countries. This has however changed with the adoption of environmental policies and legislative frameworks in most countries in the world. This drive was mainly inspired by the conservation strategies developed and promoted by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). This article is a presentation of the findings and observations that led to successful land reclamation by the cement factory. Steps taken for this reclamation effort were of prime interest to the author and were retraced resulting in this position paper. A comparative approach is used, given the conventional methods that most projects of this nature employ. Most of the environmental and land degradation are caused by profit motivated industries who do nothing or very little to repair the damage caused in the course of their work. The Haller Park at the Bamburi cemen...

v (1) Right of Access (1.1) Parliaments should pass as a priority effective access to information legislation, in accordance with these Recommendations, giving everyone a right to access information held by public authorities. (2) Scope of Application (2.1) The obligations set out in access to information legislation should apply to all bodies that carry out public functions, regardless of their form or designation. In particular, bodies that provide public services under public contracts should, to that extent, be covered by the legislation. The Group commends the situation in South Africa, whereby even private bodies are obliged to disclose information where this is necessary for the exercise or protection of any right. (3) Routine Publication (3.1) Public bodies should be required by law to publish and disseminate widely a range of key information in a manner that is easily accessible to the public. Over time, the amount of information subject to such disclosure should be increased. (3.2) Public bodies should be required to develop publication schemes, with a view to increasing the amount of information subject to automatic publication over time. (3.3) Public bodies should make use of new information technologies so that, over time, all information that might be the subject of a request, and that is not covered by an exception, is available electronically. This will not only significantly promote public access to this information but also Initiative, the Commonwealth Secretariat, NGOs and the international community to provide assistance for the following: (15.3.a) Certain jurisdictions, such as small states, countries in transition and specific regions face greater challenges and needs for technical and expert assistance in the field of access to information and, therefore, the above bodies should give prompt attention to their requests for activities, information, targeted meetings and advice; (15.3.b) The Group recognized the need for better information on access and, as a result, recommended that Commonwealth-wide comparative studies be conducted in key thematic areas; and (15.3.c) The Group supported the idea of developing a code of record maintenance practice for the Commonwealth. Conclusion The Group recognizes the enormous variety that exists within the Commonwealth and that the implementation of these Recommendations for access to information will vary from country to country. At the same time, we believe that these Recommendations represent a foundational set of standards to which all Commonwealth jurisdictions should aspire. We call on all Commonwealth Parliaments and their Members to take effective measures, as soon as possible, to implement these Recommendations in practice.

We analyze the effect of social ties between a provincial leader and provincial elites on governance in China. Using panel data for 26 years, we show that party secretaries who built their careers within the province that they govern spend more on education and health care, provide more public goods, and are less predatory towards business than party secretaries who built their careers elsewhere. There is no difference in economic growth between local and outsider party secretaries. For causal identification, we exploit exogenous variation in central leadership and provincial leaders' term limits. We hypothesize that the underlying mechanism driving our results is the elite capture and provide evidence against alternative explanations. Leaders with implicit contracts with provincial elites, who helped them to power, partly inherit the elites' preferences. When elites preferences are relatively aligned with the preferences of the general population, elite capture can serve as an imperfect substitute for local accountability; otherwise, capture worsens governance. This explains the sharp contrast between the effects of elite capture on governance in China and Russia.