John Baden

John Baden and Richard Stroup, "Property Rights, Environmental Quality, and the Management of National Forests", ed. Garrett Hardin and John Baden, Managing the Commons, San Fransisco, W.H. Freeman and Company, 1977.

In sum, externality is recognized by many economists and political scientists as a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for government interference with markets. However, an important form of externality is pervasive also in all government forms of organization. At best, decision makers are held accountable by the threat of replacement. They do not directly receive the gains from better management (or costs from poor management) as private resource owners generally do. [236]

If the value of timber is expected to increase, then relatively intensive silviculture would be expected of the private operator, who had estimated both the costs and the benefits from various rates of harvest and levels of investment. The same incentives do not bear upon public managers insulated from market forces. The public manager is likely to find the prospect of increasing production more attractive than a rational consideration of the marginal benefits from this increase would indicate. Growing trees is fun. [237]