Paul A. Samuelson taught that every society has to choose between butter and guns. Individuals have to make the Gossen test of utility equivalence. The authors of the recent Mirrlees Review seem to believe that they can avoid this choice by considering taxation only. But how can one decide on...

The Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice began publication in 1983 under the title Economia delle scelte pubbliche, changing to its present title in 1998. Under either name, the Journal reflected the founding editor's (Domenico da Empoli) desire to amplify and extend the Italian...

This essay is written for a Festschrift to commemorate Jürgen Backhaus's contributions to political economy on the occasion of his retirement from the University of Erfurt. Jürgen is a penetrating and wide-ranging scholar from whom I have learned much since we first met in 1974. It would be...

This paper discusses the role that the economics of uncertainty has played in the theory of public finance. From being mostly concerned with its choice-theoretic foundations in the 1950s and ‘60s, the theory of expected utility maximization and risk averse behaviour has contributed decisively...