Exam 2 study guide
Institutions, power, and inequality
You should understand…
- …why institutions matter for public administration, policy, and governance
- …the strengths and weaknesses of and the and general differences between three main theoretical approaches to institutions: institutions as rational behavior, institutions as constraints, and institutions as temporary equilibria
- …the difference between informal and formal institutions
- …why informal institutions exert influence over our actions even if they’re not officially codified
- …the difference between self-enforcing, self-reinforcing, and self-undermining institutions
- …the role of path dependency in the emergence of institutions
Market and government failures
You should understand…
- …the difference between private goods, club goods, common pool resources, and public goods (and how they can be classified as (non)rivalrous and (non)excludable)
- …what a market failure is
- …what a government failure is
- …what public goods are and how governments, the private sector, and informal institutions can address them
- …what common pool resources (CPRs) are and how governments, the private sector, and informal institutions can address them
- …the difference between social and private marginal cost (supply) and marginal benefit (demand)
- …what externalities are and how governments, the private sector, and informal institutions can address them
- …what Coasian bargaining is, when it is advantageous, and why it sometimes fails
- …how cap and trade systems can fix externalities (and when they can’t)
- …how Pigouvian taxes can fix externalities (and when they can’t)
- …how regulation can fix externalities (and when and why it can’t)
- …the difference between income and assets
- …why shared national identity and strong horizontal networks of institutions are important for a country’s social and economic wellbeing
- …how inequitable public policies lead to decreased public goods provision, unequal institutional access, and increased ethnofractionalization
- …why slavery and white supremacy have had lasting institutional impacts on the economic system of today and how government policies have contributed to these consequences (specifically in housing and education)