Public Choice Analysis in Historical Perspective

Alan Peacock poses the question of whether the history of economic thought is an essential part of the training of scholars concerned with the study of public finance. He contends that the perspective gained by studying the origins of public choice analysis can offer an important stimulus to scientific progress. His first lecture, The demand for historical perspective, traces the decrease in demand for historical perspective. His second lecture, Public choice and the analysis of public sector growth, criticizes those theories of growth in government expenditure that ignore the political process. In his third lecture, The economic consequences of public sector growth, he extends the conventional contemporary model of bureaucracy. A final lecture, The calculus of consent and limits on government expenditure growth, considers the work of Knut Wicksell and Amilcare Puviani when seeking to explain ways of limiting public sector growth.