Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Public sector
Summary
The public sector, also called the state sector, is the part of the economy composed of both public services and public enterprises. Public sectors include the public goods and governmental services such as the military, law enforcement, infrastructure, public transit, public education, along with health care and those working for the government itself, such as elected officials. The public sector might provide services that a non-payer cannot be excluded from (such as street lighting), services which benefit all of society rather than just the individual who uses the service. Public enterprises, or state-owned enterprises, are self-financing commercial enterprises that are under public ownership which provide various private goods and services for sale and usually operate on a commercial basis.
Organizations that are not part of the public sector are either part of the private sector or voluntary sector. The private sector is composed of the economic sectors that are intended to earn a profit for the owners of the enterprise. The voluntary, civic, or social sector concerns a diverse array of non-profit organizations emphasizing civil society. In the United Kingdom, the term "wider public sector" is often used, referring to public sector organizations outside central government.
The organization of the public sector can take several forms, including:
Direct administration funded through taxation; the delivering organization generally has no specific requirement to meet commercial success criteria, and production decisions are determined by government.
State-owned enterprises; which differ from direct administration in that they have greater management autonomy and operate according to commercial criteria, and production decisions are not generally taken by a government (although goals may be set for them by the government).
The public sector in many countries is organized at three levels: Federal or National, Regional (State or Provincial), and Local (Municipal or County).
Partial outsourcing (of the scale many businesses do, e.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
Ontological neighbourhood
Related courses (9)
HUM-349: Régulation et gouvernance dans le secteur public
Ce cours vise à présenter et à analyser la manière dont l'État intervient dans la fourniture de services publics, les principes servant à gérer les organisations publiques et l'influence des règles im
HUM-471: Economic growth and sustainability I
This course examines growth from various angles: economic growth, growth in the use of resources, need for growth, limits to growth, sustainable growth, and, if time permits, population growth and gro
ENV-471: Environmental economics
Introduction to economic analysis applied to environmental issues: all the necessary basic concepts, including cost-benefit analysis, for environmental policy making and its instruments (examples: cli
Related publications (85)
Related concepts (16)
Public–private partnership
A public–private partnership (PPP, 3P, or P3) is a long-term arrangement between a government and private sector institutions. Typically, it involves private capital financing government projects and services up-front, and then drawing revenues from taxpayers and/or users over the course of the PPP contract. Public–private partnerships have been implemented in multiple countries and are primarily used for infrastructure projects. They have been employed for building, equipping, operating and maintaining schools, hospitals, transport systems, and water and sewerage systems.
Public service
A public service or service of general (economic) interest is any service intended to address specific needs pertaining to the aggregate members of a community. Public services are available to people within a government jurisdiction as provided directly through public sector agencies or via public financing to private businesses or voluntary organizations (or even as provided by family households, though terminology may differ depending on context). Other public services are undertaken on behalf of a government's residents or in the interest of its citizens.
Public good (economics)
In economics, a public good (also referred to as a social good or collective good) is a good that is both non-excludable and non-rivalrous. For such goods, users cannot be barred from accessing or using them for failing to pay for them. Also, use by one person neither prevents access of other people nor does it reduce availability to others. Therefore, the good can be used simultaneously by more than one person. This is in contrast to a common good, such as wild fish stocks in the ocean, which is non-excludable but rivalrous to a certain degree.
Related MOOCs (1)
African Cities - Mobility
Les villes africaines, en particulier les grandes agglomérations, sont marquées depuis la 2ème moitié du XXème siècle par une croissance démographique et spatiale sans précédent, ce qui accroit les be