Science as a Public Good

     Former Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, has recently been campaigning for increased funding for scientific research of HIV/AIDS pandemic.  There are obvious costs associated with the extensive research that is needed to find a cure to the HIV virus, which has already led to the deaths of over 30 million people. Those who would benefit from the research include the 60 million people previously infected with the virus as well as 2.6 million people who are infected every year. It is also clear that humanity, as a whole, would be better off with a cure for HIV/AIDS.

     So why is Clinton giving a speech calling for the U.S. and other nations to put money into research that could harness this pandemic? It is clear that there is not enough private funding to support the research needed to develop this science. Certainly, no one single victim of AIDS could put out enough money to find a cure. 

     The consumption of a cure to AIDS would is obviously non-competitive and non-exhaustive. This means that if a cure were discovered, one person’s use would not hinder anyone else’s use of the new cure. Also, due to the nature of the scientific information that the research would produce, consumption of that information would be nonexclusive. Once the information has been produced, anyone can use it. People all around the world can have access to the research information at a marginal cost of almost nothing. 

     What will occur as a result of the nature of information is free riding by those individuals who wait until a cure is discovered and then use that cure to their benefit while not participating in any of the costs. The larger the size of the group, the more likely individuals in that group are to participate in free riding. The inefficiency, of course, is that too little is produced. Everyone wants a cure, but nobody is willing to pay for that cure because someone else will eventually step up and incur the costs. 

     This is typically where the role of government comes into play. The problem in today’s society is that there are many different governments and people in various countries who are inflicted with AIDS. Government’s themselves have incentive to free ride. The U.S. government doesn’t want to pay for the research that the rest of the world will use. Thus, far too little money is being put towards the development of a cure for HIV/AIDS.