# An Analysis of the Supply of Open Government Data
## 2 Literature Review
### Determinants of the Supply of Open Government Data
The literature has also recognized that the sociodemographic characteristics of individuals, such as age, gender, and marital status, might be important determinants of the demand of public goods and services. (For a classical analysis on this issue see [51] and, for a literature review of the impact of socio-demographic characteristics on the size of government spending on public goods and other type of goods and services, see [50]) Hence, changes in the sociodemographic characteristics of households are related with changes in the demand for public goods and services (for instance, a change in the average age of individuals might lead to a change in the demand of certain services such as public education and public welfare). Therefore, changes in the sociodemographic characteristics of voters in a democracy might lead to changes in their demand for public goods, and governments have incentives to change their supply of public goods accordingly. Most theoretical models that seek to explain the demand of private and pure public goods consider whether public goods are normal, neutral or inferior (see [52; 53]). If a good is normal, then an increase in the income of households leads to an increase in the demand for such a good. If a good is inferior, then an increase in household income leads to a fall in the demand of such a good. When income increases, households might substitute the demand of low-quality goods for high-quality goods, which might explain why the demand of certain goods might fall as household income increases. A neutral good does not respond to changes in household income (see [54]). Hence, we could expect that an increase in the country's income might lead to an increase (or fall) in the demand of open government data if this good is normal or inferior, and governments might respond by increasing (or reducing) the supply of open government data. In addition, most theoretical models that study the provision of pure public goods consider the size of the population as an important determinant of the provision of pure public goods (see [39; 52; 53]). As we mentioned before, a pure public good is non-excludable (once a pure public good is provided, then any person can have access to that good) and non-rival (the consumption of the good by some agent does not preclude the consumption of the same good by everyone else). Under these circumstances, the non-excludable property of a pure public good means that there could be economies of scale in the costs of providing a pure public good (see [55]). This means that the per capita costs of providing a pure public good decrease as the cost of public goods are shared among more people. In addition, an increase in the size of the population might also be associated with an increase in the size of the tax base that finances the provision of a pure public good (see [52; 53]). This, in turn, leads to a fall in the per capita cost of providing public goods, which increases the demand for this type of goods. Therefore, we could expect that an increase in the size of the population of a country might lead to an increase of the demand of open government data, and governments might respond by increasing the corresponding supply of such goods. In summary, to guide the empirical analysis to be conducted in the following sections, we have relied on formal economic theory to characterize empirically verifiable tests of probabilistic determinants on the provision of open government data. In our analysis, we consider open government data as a pure public good because it satisfies two properties identified in the economic literature: the non-excludable and non-rival good properties.