IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-01475774.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A genealogy of the concept of merit wants

Author

Listed:
  • Maxime Desmarais-Tremblay

    (Centre Walras-Pareto - UNIL - Université de Lausanne = University of Lausanne, CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

This paper proposes a genealogy of the concept of merit wants coined by Richard A. Musgrave in his Theory of Public Finance (1959). The concept of merit wants can only be understood as a complement to the concept of public goods. I suggest that Musgrave invented the concept to apprehend some considerations that have been left out in the process of consolidation of the concept of public good. The narrow definition of the latter could not account for important state responsibilities that have been asserted by many economists. I attempt to reconstruct Musgrave's intellectual background. First, I select examples of arguments for state intervention from authors influential in Musgrave's formative period (J.S. Mill, H. Sidgwick, E. Sax, H. Ritschl, G. Cassel, A. Wagner). Second, I argue that the invention of the concept in the 1950s reflected contemporary concerns for redistributive policies. I show that critics of the New Welfare approach (G. Colm, A. Hansen, W. Heller, H. Bowen) have held similar views, which were also in line with the liberal policy spirit of the post-war era in the United States.

Suggested Citation

  • Maxime Desmarais-Tremblay, 2016. "A genealogy of the concept of merit wants," Post-Print hal-01475774, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01475774
    DOI: 10.1080/09672567.2016.1186202
    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. David C. Colander & Harry Landreth (ed.), 1996. "The Coming Of Keynesianism To America," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 451.
    2. James M. Buchanan & Richard A. Musgrave, 1999. "Public Finance and Public Choice: Two Contrasting Visions of the State," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262024624, April.
    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. Maxime Desmarais-Tremblay, 2017. "Paternalism and the public household. On the domestic origins of public economics," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-01560189, HAL.

    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. Roger W. Garrison, 2014. "Hayek and Friedman," Chapters, in: Roger W. Garrison & Norman Barry (ed.), Elgar Companion to Hayekian Economics, chapter 6, pages 116-137, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Luca Fiorito & Matías Vernengo, 2009. "The Other J.M.: John Maurice Clark and the Keynesian Revolution," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(4), pages 899-916.
    3. Marek Wigier, 2015. "Results of Support for Agriculture during the CAP Implementation in Poland," Oblik i finansi, Institute of Accounting and Finance, issue 1, pages 134-144, March.
    4. Christoph March & Ina Schieferdecker, 2021. "Technological Sovereignty as Ability, Not Autarky," CESifo Working Paper Series 9139, CESifo.
    5. Christian Jaramillo, 2009. "Research and Development in Culture: A Case for Cross Subsidies in the Arts," Documentos CEDE 5346, Universidad de los Andes, Facultad de Economía, CEDE.
    6. Paul Davidson, 2015. "What was the primary factor encouraging mainstream economists to marginalize post Keynesian theory?," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(3), pages 369-383, July.
    7. Pierre Salmon, 2001. "Constitutional Implications of Electoral Assumptions," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 12(4), pages 333-349, December.
    8. J. Ronnie Davis, 2020. "History of a Journal: Public Finance Quarterly to Public Finance Review," Public Finance Review, , vol. 48(3), pages 285-302, May.
    9. Jaelani, Aan, 2017. "Manajemen pengeluaran publik di Indonesia: Tinjauan ekonomi Islam pada APBN 2017 [Public expenditure management in Indonesia: Islamic economic review on state budget 2017]," MPRA Paper 77423, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 07 Mar 2017.
    10. Zan Oplotnik & Bostjan Brezovnik, 2004. "Financing local government in Slovenia," Post-Communist Economies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(4), pages 483-496.
    11. Hagemann, Harald, 2024. "Émigré Economists in America: Their Impact and Their Experiences," SocArXiv c5v97, Center for Open Science.
    12. Nick Cowen, 2018. "Robust Against Whom?," Advances in Austrian Economics, in: Austrian Economics: The Next Generation, volume 23, pages 91-111, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    13. Massimo Florio & Sara Colautti, 2005. "A logistic growth theory of public expenditures: A study of five countries over 100 years," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 122(3), pages 355-393, March.
    14. J. W. Nevile & P. Kriesler, 2011. "Why Keynesian Policy was More Successful in the Fifties and Sixties than in the Last Twenty Years," The Economic and Labour Relations Review, , vol. 22(1), pages 1-16, May.
    15. Matthew Weinzierl, 2018. "Revisiting the Classical View of Benefit‐based Taxation," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(612), pages 37-64, July.
    16. Maxime Desmarais-Tremblay, 2017. "Paternalism and the public household. On the domestic origins of public economics," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 17032, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    17. Bagchi, Amaresh & Chakraborty, Pinaki, 2004. "Towards a rational system of centre-state revenue transfers in India: An exploration," Working Papers 04/16, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy.
    18. Karl Case, 2008. "Musgrave’s vision of the public sector: the complex relationship between individual, society and state in public good theory," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 32(4), pages 348-355, October.
    19. Ortiz, Isabel, & Cummins, Matthew. & Karunanethy, Kalaivani., 2015. "Fiscal space for social protection and the SDGs options to expand social investments in 187 countries," ILO Working Papers 994877663402676, International Labour Organization.
    20. Hefeker, Carsten, 2003. "Ressourcenverteilung in der EU: Eine polit-okonomische Perspektive," Discussion Paper Series 26229, Hamburg Institute of International Economics.

    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:hal:journl:hal-01475774. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.