Public Goods and Regulatory Organization is the pgro full form. The Public Good Research Organization (PGRO) is committed to advancing our collective knowledge about the public good, and providing public goods research to decision makers at all levels of government.
The mission of PGRO is straightforward: we want to understand how best to provide essential services like health care and education; we want to make sure those services are both effective and fair; and we want people across the world who need help – for whatever reason – to be able to access those essential services as efficiently as possible.
What’s included in “public goods”?
Public goods can be divided into two groups: pure public goods such as fresh air, defense, national security, and scientific research; and public bads such as pollution, crime, and congestion. In this website we will be discussing mainly pure public goods because they are of greater interest to more scholars.
What is the relationship between the private market and public goods?
It’s a common misconception that all “good things” should be provided by the market, and all “bad things” should be provided by governments. Actually, the relationship is more nuanced than that. For example, consider national defense. On the one hand it’s not something you can deny to anyone (that is, there’s no way for me to exclude you from protection), so it would seem like a “pure public good.” On the other hand, if I pay for defense and you don’t, then society as a whole is worse off. In this case it would be better to have everyone involved. So that’s an example of how some pure public goods are not “pure” in practice. But what about all those “bad things,” like pollution? These are an example of “public bads” – they benefit some people while harming others.
Of course whether a service or product is a pure public good or a public bad isn’t always obvious. For instance, consider education. The more educated the population becomes, the less likely businesses will locate elsewhere because potential employees can’t read instructions or perform basic math functions – which might make it easier to attract them to your business. That’s a good reason for government to invest in education, because it increases the number of potential employees. On the other hand, consider military defense again. The more educated the population becomes, the less likely they are to elect someone like Hitler or Stalin and therefore we need less defense spending. This is also a good reason for government to invest in education: fewer wars means less defense spending!
Pure public goods and public bads can both be provided by either markets or governments depending on the circumstances. Sometimes we want only part of society (or even one person) involved; sometimes we want everyone involved; and sometimes there’s no way to get people involved at all (for example with pollution). Public goods research is all about understanding which goods and services should be provided by the market and which should be provided by government.
What is a “regulatory organization”?
A regulatory organization is a group of people who make and enforce rules for something. In this case, they would be making and enforcing rules that govern how to provide public goods as efficiently as possible.