Defining Global Public Goods

Abstract

People need both private and public goods for their well‐being. This chapter focuses on public goods, introducing the generic concept of public goods first, refining this generic definition, and identifying the distinguishing characteristics of global public goods. The main properties and distinguishing features of international public goods, including regional and global public goods can be grouped into two sets. The first is that their benefits have strong qualities of publicness – i.e., they are marked by nonrivalry in consumption and nonexcludability. These features place them in the general category of public goods. The second criterion is that their benefits are quasi universal in terms of countries (covering more than one group of countries), people (accruing to several, preferably all population groups), and generations (extending to both current and future generations, or at least meeting the needs of current generations without foreclosing development options for future generations). This property makes humanity as a whole the publicum, or beneficiary of global public goods.

Global health financing: Priority to poor people or poor countries?

“…One particularly important category of GPGHs concerns widely disseminated knowledge and information (Kaul et al 1999;Moon et al 2013). This category includes, for example, research findings on the causes of disease and effective interventions.…”

Global public goods for health: weaknesses and opportunities in the global health system

“…The growing density of trans-border interconnections and interdependence which are the hallmarks of globalization has arguably increased the demand for public goods responding to global social needs. While the term global public good (GPG) is sometimes used loosely to denote that which is 'good' for the global public, we restrict our use of the term to its technical definition for its useful analytical clarity (Kaul et al, 1999a). Examples of important GPGs for health include norms and rules, standards and guidelines, research on the causes and treatment of disease, and comparative evidence and analysis (see Table 2 for further examples).…”

Paying for International Environmental Public Goods

“…Such IEPGs frequently also deliver benefits across multiple generations (Kaul et al 1999), but we do not address this aspect of the problem. In practice, the beneficiaries of international public goods include national populations and their representatives, nation states, transnational corporations and non-governmental organizations, as well as a newly emerging set of institutions.…”

“…We focus on the group of ecosystem services that are both public and international. These are services that: (i) cover more than one group of countries; (ii) benefit not only a broad spectrum of countries but also a broad spectrum of the global population; (iii) meet the needs of both present and future generations (Kaul et al 1999;Anand 2004). International public goods generated in any one county must therefore generate spillover effects beyond a nation's boundary (Morrissey et al 2002).…”