The collected works of James M. Buchanan / 5, The demand and supply of public goods

Public-goods theory constituted a major element in James M. Buchanans research agenda throughout the 1960s. The Demand and Supply of Public Goods is a major part of that work. At the time that Buchanan was elaborating on his theories of public goods, the prevailing trend in public economics was the emergence of public-expenditure theory, which attempted to form a comprehensive theory of the state around the notion of market failure. The Demand and Supply of Public Goods established Buchanans broad purpose of explicitly comparing market performance with political performance. As such, the book is an important part of Buchanans contractarian theory of the productive state. Conceived originally as a series of lectures given at Cambridge University in 1961 and 1962, The Demand and Supply of Public Goods is written for students, but is in no way a textbook of dry pedagogy. Instead, as Geoffrey Brennan writes in the foreword, What Buchanan provides here is a clear statement of the contractarian approach to public goods problems, very much in the voluntary exchange tradition of Wicksell and Lindhal. James M. Buchanan is an eminent economist who won the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986 and is considered one of the greatest scholars of liberty in the twentieth century. The entire series will include: Volume 1: The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty Volume 2: Public Principles of Public Debt Volume 3: The Calculus of Consent Volume 4: Public Finance in Democratic Process Volume 5: The Demand and Supply of Public Goods Volume 6: Cost and Choice Volume 7: The Limits of Liberty Volume 8: Democracy in Deficit Volume 9: The Power to Tax Volume 10: The Reason of Rules Volume 11: Politics by Principle, Not Interest Volume 12: Economic Inquiry and Its Logic Volume 13: Politics as Public Choice Volume 14: Debt and Taxes Volume 15: Externalities and Public Expenditure Theory Volume 16: Choice, Contract, and Constitutions Volume 17: Moral Science and Moral Order Volume 18: Federalism, Liberty, and the Law Volume 19: Ideas, Persons, and Events Volume 20: Indexes Front Matter......Page 1 Photograph of James M. buchanan, Charlottesville, Virginia, 1964......Page 3 Title Page......Page 5 Publishing and Copyright Details......Page 6 Table of Contents......Page 7 Foreword, pp. ix-xii......Page 9 Preface, pp. xiii-xv......Page 13 The Demand and Supply of Public Goods......Page 17 1. A Methodological Introduction, p. 3......Page 19 2. Simple Exchange in a World of Equals, p. 12......Page 28 3. Simple Exchange in a World of Unequals, p. 29......Page 45 4. Pure and Impure Public Goods, p. 48......Page 64 5. Many Private Goods, Many Persons, p. 74......Page 90 6. Many Public Goods, Many Persons, p. 96......Page 112 7. The Publicness of Political Decisions, p. 120......Page 136 8. The Institutions of Fiscal Choice, p. 142......Page 158 9. Which Goods Should Be Public?, p. 161......Page 177 10. Toward a Positive Theory of Public Finance, p. 180......Page 196 Supplementary Reading Materials, p. 191......Page 207 Author Index, p. 195......Page 211 Subject Index, p. 197......Page 213 End of the Book, p. 202......Page 218 Originally Published: Chicago : Rand Mcnally, 1968. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 191-193) And Indexes.