Chapter 11

The focus of the chapter was based mainly on the different types of goods that are part of a market, and how they affect policy makers' decisions, with the main focus on public goods and common resources as the chapter's title states. Many problems arise with common goods, as no actual revenue is made from them, but instead have benefits that cause people to decide on whether the benefit would be worth the cost of producing it. Because they are public, the problem of free-riders also comes up when dealing with something like a fireworks show, where some people can just not pay to see it. Then there's the gray area between public and private goods for some like lighthouses, where it was a private good early on but turned into a public good. Cost-benefit analysis is important, as rough estimations have to be made of the benefit when compared to the cost of it to see whether it's a good decision or not to produce or have. Common resources face a different type of problem, with private decision makers constantly overusing what is available, making it worse for other people that want to use it. With this in mind, government intervention aims to regulate it efficiently, so that no problems come about from the overuse of it, although sometimes it is very hard to enforce when you consider something like the ocean and how vast it is, with many people mostly looking out for themselves might not think twice about the negative effects they create.