The lighthouse after Coase: Alternative ways to provide goods and func-tions of state

Abstract

This article attempts to answer the question of what determines the choice of the method to provide one or another public good. Why is one good given as a private one, another one as a club good, the third one as a purely public good, and the fourth one as a mix of different forms. In fact, this question includes the question of what the state should (and should not) do. The main part of the article presents a review of the discussion concerning the good, which played a special role in economic theory - the lighthouses. Although the classics of political economy of XIX - early XX centuries considered them as a striking example of pure public goods, the famous article by R. Coase [Coase, 1974] concludes that the services of lighthouses in England and Wales were not funded from general taxes, that is, they were not provided as public goods until the second third of XIX century. Further development of this discussion, which is still incomplete and relevant, leads to the understanding that lighthouse services are provided in different countries and/ or at different times as goods of various types. The same applies to almost any other goods. The concrete way of providing this good depends not only on the country and time, but also on how to estimate the specific offenses it provides. We conclude that there exist no private, public, etc. benefits by themselves, and a socially effective way of delivering benefits depends on the technologies and institutions available in the society.