Abstract
In the November 1954 issue of this Review my paper on “The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure” presented a mathematical exposition of a public expenditure theory that goes back to Italian, Austrian, and Scandinavian writers of the last 75 years. After providing that theory with its needed logically-complete optimal conditions, I went on to demonstrate the fatal inability of any decentralized market or voting mechanism to attain or compute this optimum. The present note presents in terms of two-dimensional diagrams an essentially equivalent formulation of the theory’s optimum conditions and briefly discusses some criticisms.
Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 21 (May 1955), pp. 350–6.
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Notes
Richard A. Musgrave, “The Voluntary Exchange Theory of Public Economy.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, LIII (February 1939), pp. 213–17.
Stephen Enke, “More on the Misuse of Mathematics in Economics: A Rejoinder,” this Review, XXXVII (May 1955), 131–33
See Gerhard Colm, “The Theory of Public Expenditure,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, CLXXXIII (January 1936), I–II
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© 1995 Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Samuelson, P.A. (1995). Diagrammatic Exposition of a Theory of Public Expenditure. In: Estrin, S., Marin, A. (eds) Essential Readings in Economics. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24002-9_8
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