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Dear HES colleagues, 
 
A Chinese graduate student wrote that his <<dissertation will begin with 
Smith's thought on public goods, and ends with the modern ...theory. Any 
suggestion or information is helpful!>> 
 
I do not recall that Adam Smith ever addressed the problem of public goods, 
except possibly for his famous praise of the Navigation Act, which 
protected British sailors and ships, on grounds that <<defence ... is of 
much more importance than opulence>> (Wealth of Nations, book IV, ch 2). JS 
Mill, in Principles of Political Economy (1848) notes that numerous ships 
can benefit from a single lighthouse beam, which is a form of public good. 
But neither Smith nor Mill defined the concept of 'ideal' or 'pure' public 
goods in contrast to private goods. This task was accomplished by Samuelson 
in his justly famous 1954 and 1955 articles published in the Review of 
Economics and Statistics. 
 
So, for me, the theory of public goods, at least in the English-speaking 
world, begins with Samuelson. 
 
I recently came across an undated paper written by Helen Alford and titled 
"Putting Human Development at the Centre:  Applying the Common Good Model 
to Global Wealth Distribution". Ms Alford informs us that <<The history of 
the idea of a "public good" goes back well into the 19th century and the 
works of important continental European economists. Due to the lack of 
language skills among English speakers the theory of public goods did not 
really begin to develop in the English-speaking world until the 1954 
article of Paul Samuelson, "The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure". Since 
then, the topic has become the subject of lively discussion amongst 
economists and others.>> 
 
Samuelson himself, in his 1955 diagrammatic paper (which is included in a 
book of readings that I happen to own) acknowledges that his theory of 
public expenditure <<goes back to Italian, Austrian, and Scandinavian 
writers of the last 75 years.>> Unfortunately I do not have convenient 
access to his 1954 article, to check the sources. Nor does Ms Alford 
provide us with references, or even the authorship, of any of the <<works 
of important continental European economists>> that she mentions.  Could 
someone on this list enlighten me, and the graduate student in China? 
 
The paper by Helen Alford is posted at 
http://department.stthomas.edu/cathstudies/cst/mgmt/puebla/alford.html 
 
 
Larry Willmore 
UN 
 
 
 
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