IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/hop/hopeec/v47y2015i5p147-173.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Paul Samuelson on Public Goods: The Road to Nihilism

Author

Listed:
  • J. Daniel Hammond

Abstract

This article is an analytical history of Paul Samuelson's writings on the theory of public goods and the role of government. We examine Samuelson's scholarly work from “The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure” (1954) to “Pure Theory of Public Expenditure and Taxation” (1969). We also briefly consider his treatment of public expenditure in Economics: An Introductory Analysis over the same period. We find that from the beginning of his career to the end of the 1960s Samuelson moved from optimism that a new age of scientific progress in economics was imminent to a view so pessimistic that he described it as nihilistic. This suggests that Samuelson's project of mathematizing and formalizing economic theory was a scientific failure.

Suggested Citation

  • J. Daniel Hammond, 2015. "Paul Samuelson on Public Goods: The Road to Nihilism," History of Political Economy, Duke University Press, vol. 47(5), pages 147-173, Supplemen.
    • Handle: RePEc:hop:hopeec:v:47:y:2015:i:5:p:147-173
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hope.dukejournals.org/content/47/suppl_1/147.full.pdf+html
    File Function: link to full text
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ryan Safner, 2021. "“Public Good” or “Good for the Public?” Political Entrepreneurship and the Public Funding of Scientific Research," Journal of Private Enterprise, The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 36(Spring 20), pages 17-44.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hop:hopeec:v:47:y:2015:i:5:p:147-173. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Center for the History of Political Economy Webmaster (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ViewProduct.php?viewby=journal&productid=45614 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.