We consider a general model of the non-cooperative provision of a public good. Under very weak assumptions there will always exist a unique Nash equilibrium in our model. A small redistribution of wealth among the contributing consumers will not change the equilibrium amount of the public good. However, larger redistributions of wealth will change the set of contributors and thereby change the equilibrium provision of the public good. We are able to characterize the properties and the comparative statics of the equilibrium in a quite complete way and to analyze the extent to which government provision of a public good 'crowds out' private contributions.

In many applications, assumptions about the log-concavity of a probability distribution allow just enough special structure to yield a workable theory. This paper catalogs a series of theorems relating log-concavity and/or log-convexity of probability density functions, distribution functions, reliability functions, and their integrals. We list a large number of commonly-used probability distributions and report the log-concavity or log-convexity of their density functions and their integrals. We also discuss a variety of applications of log-concavity that have appeared in the literature.

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There is a remarkable difference between the prices that commercial publishers charge to libraries for economics journals and the prices charged by professional societies and university presses. This price difference does not reflect a difference in quality. The six most-cited economics journals listed in the Social Science Citation Index are all nonprofit journals and their library subscription prices average about $180 per year. Only five of the twenty most-cited journals are owned by commercial publishers, and the average price of these five journals is about $1660 per year. Tables 1 and 2 compare library costs and measures of cost-effectiveness for the ten most-cited nonprofit journals and the ten most-cited journals owned by commercial presses. The average price per page of the commercial journals is about six times as high and the average price per citation is about about sixteen times times as high as for the nonprofit journals.

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