The marginal cost of providing a certain quantity of a pure public good to an additional consumer after it is provided to any one consumer is:

Question

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

A pure public good is nonrivalrous and nonexcludable, so once the good is provided to one person, serving an additional person imposes no extra cost—hence the marginal cost is zero.

1) Relevant knowledge points and concepts
- Public good: nonrivalrous (one person’s consumption does not reduce availability to others) and nonexcludable (cannot prevent people from consuming).
- Marginal cost (MC): the additional cost of providing one more unit of service or serving one more consumer.
- For a pure public good, the fixed provision cost may be positive, but the incremental cost of adding consumers after provision is zero.

2) Step-by-step reasoning
- Let C(n) denote total cost of providing the good to n consumers.
- For a pure public good, once the good is provided (n ≥ 1), additional consumers do not require extra inputs or duplication of the good.
- Therefore C(n) = F for all n ≥ 1, where F is the initial fixed cost of provision.
- Marginal cost of the nth consumer: MC(n) = C(n) − C(n−1).

3) Intermediate steps / simple calculation
- For n ≥ 2: C(n) = F and C(n−1) = F, so MC(n) = F − F = 0.
- Thus, after the first provision, every additional consumer has MC = 0.

4) Why the correct answer is correct
- By the definition of a pure public good (nonrivalry), serving one more consumer does not use additional resources; therefore no extra cost is incurred. The marginal cost after initial provision is zero.

5) Why the other options are incorrect
- “Positive and increasing”: implies serving additional consumers becomes costlier (rivalry or rising costs), which contradicts nonrivalry.
- “Positive and constant”: implies each additional consumer requires a constant extra resource or fee, inconsistent with pure public goods.
- “Positive and decreasing”: implies extra cost exists but falls with scale; still implies nonzero incremental cost, unlike a pure public good.

6) Conclusion
- The marginal cost of providing a pure public good to an additional consumer after it is provided to any one consumer is zero, confirming the provided answer.

The marginal cost of providing a certain quantity of a pure public good to an additional consumer after it is provided to any one consumer is: 单项选择题

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