----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- 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 ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]