In Modern Public Finance, senior scholars in the field review and synthesize recent theoretical developments in important areas--optimal taxation, public sector dynamics, distribution theory, and club theory, to name a few--which challenge us to understand and improve public policy. Each chapter highlights original research by a recognized leader in the field, relates this work to cumulative developments, and frames important questions for further study.

In this volume, based on a week-long symposium at the University of Munich's Center for Economic Studies, two leading scholars of governmental economics debate their divergent perspectives on the role of government and its fiscal functions. James M. Buchanan, who was influential in developing the research program in public choice, concentrates on the imperfections of the political process and stresses the need for rules to restrain governmental interference. Richard A. Musgrave, a founder of modern public finance, points to market failures and inequities that call for corrective public policies. They apply their differing economic and political philosophies to a variety of key issues. Each presentation is followed by a response and general discussion.

Explores financial aspects of constitutional government, focusing on central banking, sovereign borrowing, taxation and public expenditure.

Comprehensive framework for analysing the influence of governmental revenue-gathering and expenditure activities in all functional areas of economic activity.

This study offers the first complete overview of the remarkable public finances of the Dutch Republic of the United Provinces. Wantje Fritschy has analysed the development and structure of its public revenue and expenditure. She argues that a ‘tax revolution’ and the ‘fiscal resilience’ of the provinces together were more important for its surprising performance than Holland’s public debt alone, and the institutional and economic characteristics of its ‘urban system’ were more important than wealth due to foreign trade. Comparisons with the fiscal systems of three more centralized states - the Venetian Republic, Britain and the Ottoman Empire - underline the crucial importance of long-term ‘urbanization trajectories’ in understanding early-modern fiscal performance. It was not because it was federal that the Dutch Republic collapsed.