ADVERTISING AS A PRIVATELY SUPPLIED PUBLIC GOOD

In this paper we take a view of advertising and certain other nonprice competition as public goods. This leads to a new fundamental justification of the zero price distribution of advertising, coupled with a mark-up of the advertised good as a disguised form of price discrimination which approximates that required for efficient pricing of a public good. Further, we present a numerical counterexample wherein the commonly-observed zero price distribution of advertising is shown to lead to higher consumer and seller welfare than its separate sales at cost.