Providing Public Goods
What is something that everyone in the community can use for free?
A sidewalk or a park, without having to pay for it each time.
In this board game, the goal is to take control of all the properties and eliminate other players. In real life, this happens when a company becomes the sole provider of a good or service, controlling the market.
What is a monopoly?
This is the action the government takes when it removes an unsafe product from store shelves, requiring the manufacturer to either fix, replace, or refund it.
What is a recall?
This government agency is responsible for making sure foods, drugs, and cosmetics are safe, and that companies are honest on product labels.
What is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)?
To bring back
What is restore?
What is an example of a private good?
A type of good that must be purchased, like food or clothes, and only the person who buys it can use it.
The U.S. government passes these types of laws to prevent businesses from becoming monopolies and to protect competition.
What are antitrust laws?
Give an example of what the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) provides?
What is distributes vaccines? What is checks air quality?
This commission works to protect consumers from injuries caused by unsafe products and can issue a recall when a product is dangerous.
What is the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC)?
When two or more companies combine to form a single business.
What is a merger?
What are some examples of public services provided by the government?
Police and fire protection, to ensure safety without charging each person directly.
In 1911, this company was broken up by the government under the Sherman Antitrust Act because it had a monopoly.
What is the Standard Oil Company?
This is one of the major health risks the FDA worked to stop in 2010, after an increase in cases linked to contaminated food.
What is salmonella?
This government agency, alongside the FDA, helps improve public health by monitoring things like air quality and distributing the flu vaccine.
What is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)?
To impact or to have an influence on something or someone. It refers to the way something can change.
What is affect?
This is a major reason businesses avoid producing public goods.
What is the inability to assign costs to individuals? This is known as the "free-rider problem," where individuals can use the good without paying, reducing the profit incentive for businesses.
Sometimes a company is allowed to be the sole provider of a product, like electricity, because it’s more efficient
What is a natural monopoly?
The government ensures that products such as food, drugs, and cosmetics are safe and that they are accurately labeled to avoid misleading consumers. This process is part of protecting what?
What is consumer health and safety?
This agency protects consumers by ensuring that companies are truthful in advertising and that unfair or deceptive business practices are prevented.
What is the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)?
A situation where a third party is affected by the economic activities of others, without being directly involved in the transaction. This can be positive or negative.
What is externalities?
The government regulates car exhaust emissions to reduce this type of externality, which affects even those without cars.
What is a negative externality?
This law, passed in 1914, strengthened the Sherman Antitrust Act and banned business practices that hurt competition, such as members of competing companies sitting on each other’s boards.
What is the Clayton Antitrust Act?
In 2010, the FDA traced a salmonella outbreak to this product, leading to the removal and destruction of hundreds of millions of units to prevent further illness.
What are eggs?
This agency ensures safe and healthy working conditions by setting and enforcing standards in workplaces across the country.
What is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)?
A tax assessed on new cars that do not meet required fuel economy levels.
What is a 'gas guzzler tax'?