Public economics : a concise introduction

"Public Economics: A Concise Introduction offers a comprehensive and heterodox view of the role of the state in the economy. Without departing from the methodological approach that is usually adopted to analyse what public action in the economy should be, it expands the traditional catalogue of situations in which this action could have a raison d'être. It then analyses the objectives pursued by the states, the instruments at their disposal and the policies in which their action takes shape, thus systematizing the study of public participation in the economy. This book is completed with two chapters: one devoted to the difficulties (both theoretical and practical) that governments face in order to carry out any possible activity, confronting them with market failures, and the other reviewing the public role throughout economic history and throughout history of economic thought. This book is intended for a general audience, since establishing the limits of the interaction between the state and the market is the first question that has to be answered by anyone determined to have their own criteria on economic matters."