Collective Choice and the Lindahl Allocation Method

Ted Bergstrom, University of California, Santa Barbara

Abstract

This paper contains a proof of the existence of Lindahl equilibrium in a very general model of externalities, public goods, and non-selfish preferences. The trick in this paper is to treat all goods as pure public goods, with private goods and their competitive prices treated as special cases induced by special structure within the public goods, Lindahl framework.