IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cor/louvrp/1154.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Forty years of public economics: a personal perspective

Author

Listed:
  • DRÈZE, J. H.

Abstract

This paper presents a personal perspective on the field of public economics, as I have seen it evolve over the past forty years. Starting in the early fifties, microeconomic theory invaded the age-old field of public finance. A central core of this work consists in deriving general qualitative formulae, within the general equilibrium model extended to encompass a public sector, public goods and taxation. That central development is flanked on one side by implementable solutions to practical problems (I refer in particular to public utility pricing, road pricing and auction design) , on the other side by the development of a rich abstract framework (I refer to equilibrium with increasing returns, state-contingent contracts, priority service contracts, ... ). The two flanks should come together, as they did in the early fifties when the theoretical developments grew out of practical applications. Yet, few economists succeed in creatively linking theory to real problems, and our professional organisation fails to promote adequately such contributions and their authors. Next to this emphasis on the interplay of theory and applications, I discuss briefly the success of public economics, its fragmentation into subfields and its relation to macroeconomics. The writing of this paper was prompted by my participation in editing a volume of selected papers by William Vickrey, on his 80th birthday. Frequent references are made to his work, which is exemplary of the perspective presented here.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Drèze, J. H., 1995. "Forty years of public economics: a personal perspective," LIDAM Reprints CORE 1154, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    • Handle: RePEc:cor:louvrp:1154
    DOI: 10.1257/jep.9.2.111
    Note: In : Journal of Economic Perspectives, 9 (2), 111-130, 1995
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Boyes, William J & Happel, Stephen K, 1989. "Auctions as an Allocation Mechanism in Academia: The Case of Faculty Offices," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 3(3), pages 37-40, Summer.
    2. Charles M. Tiebout, 1956. "A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 64(5), pages 416-416.
    3. Hausman, Jerry A & Poterba, James M, 1987. "Household Behavior and the Tax Reform Act of 1986," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 1(1), pages 101-119, Summer.
    4. Groves, Theodore & Loeb, Martin, 1975. "Incentives and public inputs," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 4(3), pages 211-226, August.
    5. Cornet, Bernard, 1988. "General equilibrium theory and increasing returns : Presentation," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2-3), pages 103-118, April.
    6. KAITALA, Veijo & MÄLER, Karl & TULKENS, Henry, 1992. "The acid rain game as a resource allocation process with an application to the cooperation among Finland, Russia, and Estonia," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 1992042, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    7. Henry Tulkens, 2006. "Dynamic Processes for Public Goods: An Institution-Oriented Survey," Springer Books, in: Parkash Chander & Jacques Drèze & C. Knox Lovell & Jack Mintz (ed.), Public goods, environmental externalities and fiscal competition, chapter 0, pages 9-48, Springer.
    8. Peter Mieszkowski & Edwin S. Mills, 1993. "The Causes of Metropolitan Suburbanization," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 7(3), pages 135-147, Summer.
    9. William Vickrey, 1977. "The City as a Firm," International Economic Association Series, in: Martin S. Feldstein & Robert P. Inman (ed.), The Economics of Public Services, chapter 13, pages 334-343, Palgrave Macmillan.
    10. William Vickrey, 1948. "Some Objections to Marginal-Cost Pricing," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(3), pages 218-218.
    11. Krueger, Anne O, et al, 1991. "Report of the Commission on Graduate Education in Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 29(3), pages 1035-1053, September.
    12. Herbert Scarf, 1994. "The Allocation of Resources in the Presence of Indivisibilities," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 111-128, Fall.
    13. Dierker, Egbert & Guesnerie, Roger & Neuefeind, Wilhelm, 1985. "General Equilibrium When Some Firms Follow Special Pricing Rules," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(6), pages 1369-1393, November.
    14. Geanakoplos, John, 1990. "An introduction to general equilibrium with incomplete asset markets," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(1-2), pages 1-38.
    15. William Vickrey, 1961. "Counterspeculation, Auctions, And Competitive Sealed Tenders," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 16(1), pages 8-37, March.
    16. Vickrey, William S, 1969. "Congestion Theory and Transport Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 59(2), pages 251-260, May.
    17. P. Massé & R. Gibrat, 1957. "Application of Linear Programming to Investments in the Electric Power Industry," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 3(2), pages 149-166, January.
    18. Boiteux, M., 1971. "On the management of public monopolies subject to budgetary constraints," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 219-240, September.
    19. Donald J. Brown & Geoffrey Heal, 1979. "Equity, Efficiency and Increasing Returns," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 46(4), pages 571-585.
    20. Arnott, Richard & de Palma, Andre & Lindsey, Robin, 1991. "A temporal and spatial equilibrium analysis of commuter parking," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(3), pages 301-335, August.
    21. Guesnerie, Roger, 1975. "Pareto Optimality in Non-Convex Economies," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 43(1), pages 1-29, January.
    22. John McMillan, 1994. "Selling Spectrum Rights," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 8(3), pages 145-162, Summer.
    23. Wilson, Robert B, 1989. "Efficient and Competitive Rationing," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(1), pages 1-40, January.
    24. Klemperer, Paul D & Meyer, Margaret A, 1989. "Supply Function Equilibria in Oligopoly under Uncertainty," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(6), pages 1243-1277, November.
    25. Sandmo, Agnar, 1983. "Leif Johansen's contribution to public economics," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 317-324, August.
    26. Bohm, Peter, 1984. "Revealing demand for an actual public good," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 135-151, July.
    27. Samuelson, P. A., 1986. "Theory of optimal taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 137-143, July.
    28. McAfee, R Preston & McMillan, John, 1987. "Auctions and Bidding," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 25(2), pages 699-738, June.
    29. Edward Clarke, 1971. "Multipart pricing of public goods," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 11(1), pages 17-33, September.
    30. Dreze, Jacques H. & Arrow, Kenneth & Atkinston, Anthony B. & Basu, Kaushik & Honkapohja, Seppo & Krueger, Anne & Morales, Juan-Antonio & Stern, Nicholas, 1994. "Report of the IEA Committee on a new School of Economics and Economic Development (SEED) in the Third World," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 1-18, September.
    31. Feldstein, Martin S, 1974. "Social Security, Induced Retirement, and Aggregate Capital Accumulation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(5), pages 905-926, Sept./Oct.
    32. Peter Bohm, 1984. "Revealing demand for an actual public good," Framed Field Experiments 00129, The Field Experiments Website.
    33. E. Malinvaud, 1971. "A Planning Approach to the Public Good Problem," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Peter Bohm & Allen V. Kneese (ed.), The Economics of Environment, pages 77-93, Palgrave Macmillan.
    34. Johansen, Leif, 1977. "The theory of public goods: Misplaced emphasis?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 147-152, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Williamson, Oliver E., 2010. "Transaction Cost Economics: The Natural Progression," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 86(3), pages 215-226.
    2. Mongin, P., 1999. "Normes et jugements de valeur en economie normative," Papers 99-20, Paris X - Nanterre, U.F.R. de Sc. Ec. Gest. Maths Infor..
    3. Shoup, Donald C., 2004. "The ideal source of local public revenue," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(6), pages 753-784, November.
    4. Richard Arnott, 1998. "William Vickrey: Contributions to Public Policy," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 5(1), pages 93-113, February.
    5. Williamson, Oliver E., 2010. "Transaction Cost Economics: The Origins," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 86(3), pages 227-231.
    6. Oliver E. Williamson, 2014. "The Transaction Cost Economics Project," Montenegrin Journal of Economics, Economic Laboratory for Transition Research (ELIT), vol. 10(1), pages 7-12.
    7. Pierre Pestieau, 1994. "The current state and future directions of public finance," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 1(2), pages 169-174, October.
    8. David, Laurent & Le Breton, Michel & Merillon, Olivier, 2007. "Kolm as a Contributor to Public Utility Pricing, Second Best Culture and the Theory of Regulation," IDEI Working Papers 490, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse.
    9. Agnar Sandmo, 1999. "Asymmetric Information and Public Economics: The Mirrlees-Vickrey Nobel Prize," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 13(1), pages 165-180, Winter.
    10. Guillem López i Casasnovas & David Casado i Marín, "undated". "Análisis prospectivo de la oferta de servicios públicos en España," Studies on the Spanish Economy 28, FEDEA.
    11. David, Laurent & Le Breton, Michel & Merillon, Olivier, 2007. "Public Utility Pricing and Capacity Choice with Stochastic Demand," IDEI Working Papers 489, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse.
    12. Maria Elena Tudor, 2011. "Administrative Services Public Market," Annals of University of Craiova - Economic Sciences Series, University of Craiova, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, vol. 1(39), pages 100-109.
    13. World Bank, 2005. "Primer on Demand-Side Management : With an Emphasis on Price-Responsive Programs," World Bank Publications - Reports 8252, The World Bank Group.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Monique Florenzano, 2009. "From equilibrium models to mechanism design: On the place and the role of government in the public goods provision analysis in the second part of the twentieth century," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-00367859, HAL.
    2. Monique Florenzano, 2010. "Government and the provision of public goods:from equilibrium models to mechanismdesign," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(4), pages 1047-1077.
    3. David, Laurent & Le Breton, Michel & Merillon, Olivier, 2007. "Kolm as a Contributor to Public Utility Pricing, Second Best Culture and the Theory of Regulation," IDEI Working Papers 490, Institut d'Économie Industrielle (IDEI), Toulouse.
    4. Nicolas Gruyer & Nathalie Lenoir, 2003. "Auctioning airport slots (?)," Post-Print hal-01021718, HAL.
    5. Richard Arnott, 1998. "William Vickrey: Contributions to Public Policy," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 5(1), pages 93-113, February.
    6. Alexander Teytelboym & Shengwu Li & Scott Duke Kominers & Mohammad Akbarpour & Piotr Dworczak, 2021. "Discovering Auctions: Contributions of Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 123(3), pages 709-750, July.
    7. Lawrence M. Ausubel & Peter Cramton & Paul Milgrom, 2012. "System and Method for a Hybrid Clock and Proxy Auction," Papers of Peter Cramton 12acmhc, University of Maryland, Department of Economics - Peter Cramton, revised 2012.
    8. Cramton, Peter C, 1995. "Money Out of Thin Air: The Nationwide Narrowband PCS Auction," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 4(2), pages 267-343, Summer.
    9. Ronald M Harstad, 2011. "Behavioral Efficiency I: Definition, Methodology and Demonstration," ISER Discussion Paper 0818, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.
    10. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2020. "Improvements to auction theory and inventions of new auction formats," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2020-2, Nobel Prize Committee.
    11. Park, Sunju & Rothkopf, Michael H., 2005. "Auctions with bidder-determined allowable combinations," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 161(2), pages 399-415, March.
    12. Lawrence M. Ausubel & Peter Cramton & Wynne P. Jones, 2012. "System and Method for an Auction of Multiple Types of Items," Papers of Peter Cramton 11acjam, University of Maryland, Department of Economics - Peter Cramton, revised 2012.
    13. Sergey Sinelnikov & Pavel Kadochnikov & Ilya Trunin, 2008. "From Elections to Appointments of the Regional Governors: Major Challenges and Outcomes," Published Papers 2, Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy, revised 2008.
    14. Josheski Dushko & Karamazova Elena, 2021. "Auction theory and a note on game mechanisms," Croatian Review of Economic, Business and Social Statistics, Sciendo, vol. 7(1), pages 43-59, May.
    15. Egbert Dierker, 1986. "When does marginal cost pricing lead to Pareto efficiency?," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 46(1), pages 41-66, December.
    16. Andrej Woerner & Sander Onderstal & Arthur Schram, 2022. "Comparing Crowdfunding Mechanisms: Introducing the Generalized Moulin-Shenker Mechanism," CESifo Working Paper Series 10081, CESifo.
    17. Andrej Woerner & Sander Onderstal & Arthur Schram, 2022. "Comparing Crowdfunding Mechanisms: Introducing the Generalized Moulin-Shenker Mechanism," CESifo Working Paper Series 10081, CESifo.
    18. Wurman, Peter R. & Wellman, Michael P. & Walsh, William E., 2001. "A Parametrization of the Auction Design Space," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 35(1-2), pages 304-338, April.
    19. Jinpeng Ma, 1997. "English Auctions and Walrasian Equilibria with Multiple Objects: a dynamic approach," Departmental Working Papers 199702, Rutgers University, Department of Economics.
    20. Loertscher, Simon & Mezzetti, Claudio, 2021. "A dominant strategy, double clock auction with estimation-based tatonnement," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 16(3), July.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H00 - Public Economics - - General - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:cor:louvrp:1154. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Alain GILLIS (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/coreebe.html .

    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.