The Rise and Fall of the Public Sector in the Estimation of the Economists

Dan Usher

Chapter 3 in Economic Theory, Welfare and the State, 1990, pp 28-62 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract Over the last two centuries, there has been a great cycle of opinion among economists about the sources of inefficiency: from Adam Smith’s sharp and unqualified contrast between private sector enterprise and public sector sloth; to Mill’s qualified and reluctant allowance of large domains within the economy where the public sector must act because the private sector would not or could not do so; to Sidgwick’s concern in the latter part of the nineteenth century with what we would now call market failure and his willingness to trust the public sector to put things right; to Pigou’s detailed analysis in the early years of the twentieth century of the defects of the competitive economy coupled with an almost complete disregard of the possibility of public sector inefficiency; to a recent revival of interest in public sector economics and a reassessment of public sector efficiency reminiscent of the views of Adam Smith.

Keywords: Private Sector; Public Sector; Public Choice; Pareto Optimality; Social Welfare Function (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1990
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Working Paper: The Rise and Fall of the Public Sector in the Estimation of the Economists (1987)
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DOI: 10.1007/978-1-349-10911-1_3

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