Louis, are in fact financing their own public goods and services in accordance with this theory. For such communities to rise and prosper, the author contends, government must eliminate zoning and many other restrictions, as well as the taxation of private services.

The private provision of public goods is a much debated topic, both in the academic and the ?real life? literature. From an academic perspective, numerous potential pitfalls exist with respect to funding, willingness-to-pay, and the free rider problem. The logical solution to these problems has therefore always been government provision of public goods. In an era where governments withdraw from the market place as active providers of goods and services, however, there is a renewed interest in the private provision of these activities. This thesis takes a governmental perspective, asking how governments can encourage investments in the private provision of public goods. Since from an economic perspective the so-called ?coercive? measures (most noteworthy: regulation) are by definition inefficient, I focus on the non-coercive measures. Therewith, a trade-off is introduced between the efficiency and effectiveness of the government intervention?coercive measures are most predictable in their outcomes, but less efficient, whereas non-coercive measures are most efficient, but less predictable. The choice for non-coercive intervention instruments yields a number of dilemmas, illustrating the complexity of the choices to be made. The four dilemmas discussed are the Influenceability Dilemma, the Smart Governance Dilemma, the Policy Portfolio Dilemma, and the Joint Ownership Dilemma..

The book explores the core public tasks that the state has traditionally provided but which increasingly are being privatized and subsumed by the private sector. The night-watchman state role of providing security is instead offered by private prisons and security guards. Legitimized by the argument of efficiency gains, social security including public housing, pensions, unemployment insurance and health care are all being gradually privatized. This book argues that on the basis of efficiency, morality and equality there is still an overwhelming need for public intervention – the res publica. Although the state still funds and regulates core domains, it provides fewer and fewer visible goods. The authors show how this apparent invisibility of the state presents serious challenges for both income equality and democracy.

Public-goods theory constituted a major element in James M. Buchanan's 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 Buchanan's broad purpose of explicitly comparing market performance with political performance. As such, the book is an important part of Buchanan's 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 (1919-2013) was an eminent economist who won the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1986 and was considered one of the greatest scholars of liberty in the twentieth century.

This book provides an expansive review of the public goods theme and highlights the inherent linkage between sustainable development and corporate responsibility for improving the current and future welfare of communities both at home and abroad. The main proposition here is that sustainable development is focused on preserving and maintaining public goods. Consequently, whoever uses public goods is liable for their preservation, their maintenance, and, where they are underdeveloped, for their expansion. Successful delivery, both now and in the future, depends on a positive relationship of the public sector with the private sector. This book will serve to stimulate discussions of scholars and policy makers in the field of sustainable development with business leaders, and will close the gap between the public and the private sectors by building a common understanding and common methodologies for implementing and measuring sustainable development in the macro- and the micro-spheres.