 Richard A. Musgrave (1910–2007)Matthew Weinzierl ()
Chapter 17 in The Palgrave Companion to Harvard Economics, 2024, pp 427-452 from Springer Abstract: Abstract Richard Musgrave was one of those rare scholars of whom it could be said that he literally “wrote the book” on his field of expertise. Musgrave spent seven decades immersed in the study of taxation, public finance, and the role of the state in economic society, and by all indications he found in that study his true vocation. This chapter reviews his life and work, focusing on the development and implications of his foremost contribution, the so-called three branch model. Through it, Musgrave sought to weave together the many tangled strands of public finance theory in the mid-twentieth century, creating one coherent structure to which modern tools of economic analysis could be applied. Subsequent decades have seen public finance theorists embrace an alternative, welfarist approach, but recent work addressing weaknesses in that approach have reinvigorated, and thus made ever more valuable a clear understanding of, Musgrave’s pluralist views on how taxation and expenditure should be determined. Keywords: Richard Musgrave; Peggy Musgrave; Harvard Economics Department; Three branch model; Benefit theory of taxation; Welfarism; Optimal taxation (search for similar items in EconPapers) There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-52053-2_17 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-52053-2_17 Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Springer Books from Springer |
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