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Impure Public Goods, Relative Gains, and International Cooperation
Author(s) -
Costello Matthew J.
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
policy studies journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.773
H-Index - 69
eISSN - 1541-0072
pISSN - 0190-292X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1541-0072.1996.tb01648.x
Subject(s) - public good , criticism , consumption (sociology) , pillar , economics , distribution (mathematics) , public economics , international trade , microeconomics , political science , law , sociology , mathematical analysis , social science , mathematics , structural engineering , engineering
The characterization of the products of international cooperation as public goods has been severely challenged, undermining a central pillar of theories of international cooperation. I review the criticism of public goods assumptions, identifying the need to account for both exclusion and rival consumption in international cooperative arrangements. Drawing on the recent debate of states as relative versus absolute gains maximizers, I offer a characterization of international cooperative arrangements as discriminatory clubs. I develop a refined relative gains model, which focuses on relative net gains, and apply it to a hypothetical situation to illustrate its usefulness in predicting patterns of exclusion and distribution in international trade.