Handbook of Public Finance General Editors: Juergen G. Backhaus University of Erfurt Richard E. Wagner George Mason University Contributors: Andy H. Barnett Charles B. Blankart Thomas E. Borcherding Rainald Borck Geoffrey Brennan Giuseppe Eusepi J. Stephen Ferris Fred E. Folvary Andrea Garzoni Heinz Grossekettler Walter Hettich Scott Hinds Randall G. Holcombe Jean-Michel Josselin Carla Marchese Alain Marciano William S. Peirce Nicholas Sanchez David Schap A. Allan Schmid Russell S. Sobel Stanley L. Winer Bruce Yandle Handbook of Public Finance Editors Jürgen G. Backhaus University of Erfurt and Richard E. Wagner George Mason University KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS NEW YORK,BOSTON, DORDRECHT, LONDON, MOSCOW eBookISBN: 1-4020-7864-1 Print ISBN: 1-4020-7863-3 ©2005 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. Print ©2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers Boston All rights reserved No part of this eBook maybe reproducedor transmitted inanyform or byanymeans,electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without written consent from the Publisher Created in the United States of America Visit Springer's eBookstore at: http://ebooks.kluweronline.com and the Springer Global Website Online at: http://www.springeronline.com Handbook of Public Finance Table of Contents 1. Jürgen G. Backhaus and Richard E. Wagner 1 Society, State, and Public Finance: Setting the Analytical Stage 2. Russell S. Sobel Welfare Economics and Public Finance 19 3. Geoffrey Brennan and Giuseppe Eusepi Fiscal Constitutionalism 53 4. Thomas E. Borcherding, J. Stephen Ferris, and Andrea Garzoni Growth in the Real Size of Government since 1970 77 5. WalterHettich and Stanley L. Winer Rules, Politics, and the Normative Analysis of Taxation 109 6. Randall G. Holcombe Taxation,Production, and Redistribution 139 7. Fred E. Foldvary Public Revenue from LandRent 165 8. Richard E. Wagner Debt, Money, and Public Finance 195 9. Andy H. Barnett and Bruce Yandle Regulation by Taxation 217 10. Carla Marchese Taxation, Black Markets, and Other Unintended Consequences 237 11. Scott Hinds, Nicolas Sanchez, and David Schap Public Enterprise: Retrospective Review and Prospective Theory 277 12. William S. Peirce Privatization, Nationalization, and Aspects of Transition 301 13. Heinz Grossekettler Social Insurance 323 14. Richard E. Wagner Redistribution, Poor Relief, and the Welfare State 385 15. A. Allan Schmid Economic Analysis and Efficiency in Public Expenditure 407 vi 16. Charles B. Blankart and Rainald Borck Local Public Finance 441 17. Jean-Michel Josselin and Alain Marciano Federalism and Subsidiarity in National and International Contexts 477 18. Jürgen G. Backhaus Fiscal Sociology: What For? 521 Index 543 Chapter 1 SOCIETY, STATE, AND PUBLIC FINANCE: SETTING THE ANALYTICAL STAGE Jürgen G. Backhaus University of Erfurt [email protected] Richard E. Wagner George Mason University [email protected] Abstract Much of contemporary public finance can be described as being either Wicksellian or Edgeworthian in character. In the former, fiscal phenom- ena arise through complex processes of exchange; in the latter, theyarise through acts of choice by some maximizing agent. This chapter traces these alternative orientations in the history of thought as far back as the Cameralists, compares these writers with Adam Smith, and contrasts the Wicksellian and Edgeworthian orientations toward public finance. Keywords: Adam Smith, cameralism, Francis Edgeworth, Knut Wicksell, choice- theoretic public finance, catallactic public finance JEL classification: B10, H40 The essays that comprise this Handbook cover a wide variety of topics in the theory of public finance. As a field of systematic academic inquiry, public fi- nance arose before economics or political economy. For instance, more than 90 chairs in publicfinance had been established in Europe before the first chair was established in political economy (Backhaus,2002, p. 615). The first schol- ars of public finance were the Cameralists, who emerged in central Europe in the 16th century. For a long time after its Cameralist founding, public finance was conceived as a multi-disciplinary field of study, and most certainly not simply a subset of economic theory. The object that public finance scholarship examined, the public household, was examined in a manner that sought to in- 2 JÜRGEN G. BACKHAUS AND RICHARD E. WAGNER tegrate the economic, political, legal, and administrative elements of public finance. In the post-war period, a splintering of approaches has taken place, suffi- ciently so that it is meaningful to distinguish between the old public finance and the new, recognizing that new is not a synonym for better. The old public finance has not been replaced by the new. Both are practiced currently, and are competing for the affection and attention of scholars. If the old-style public finance is still called public finance, the new style is often called public eco- nomics instead. This distinction is found in contemporary texts and journals. For instance, there is a Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice and a Public Finance Review. There is also a Journal of Public Economics and a Journal of Public Economic Theory. The distinction between what might be called old-style and new-style pub- lic finance was recognized clearly in Richard Goode’s (1970) commentary on the theory of public finance. There, Goode compared the treatment of pub- lic finance in two different social science encyclopedias, written a generation apart. One of these was the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, which was published in 1968. The other was the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, which had been published in 1930. While Goode duly noted the theoretical advances that had occurred in economics between 1930 and 1968, he also lamented the narrowing of the subject matter of public finance. Goode concluded his lamentation on the state of publicfinance by asserting that “a so- phisticated and unified treatment of the economic, political, legal, and admin- istrative elements of public finance is needed. Unification would represent a return to a tradition as old as that of the cameralists, but for modern read- ers sophistication can be attained only by rethinking old problems and using new techniques. There is much to be done and work for a variety of talents” (p. 34). The difference that Goode noted maps nicely into the distinction we have advanced between an old-style public finance and a new-style, noting again that old and new refer simply to the times when those approaches arose and represent no judgment about relative merit or quality. As we do not embrace a Whig theory of history, we do not regard the new style of public finance as ipso facto superior to the old style. Indeed, there is much about the old-style that we regard as superior to the new. The essays in this Handbook generally affirm the orientation toward public finance that informed both Goode’s appraisal and his assessment about the potential value of scholarly inquiry that sought more fully to integrate the economic, social, political, legal, and administrative aspects of public finance. This opening essay is not a survey of the historical development of fiscal theory. It would take a very large book indeed to accomplish this. Our intention here is simply to provide some elementary historical orientation toward the SOCIETY, STATE, AND PUBLIC FINANCE: SETTING THE ANALYTICAL STAGE 3 two styles of public finance. We do this by referring to two main theoretical antinomies that run throughout the history of public finance, and to do so with reference to a few of the main historical contributors to the theory of public finance. The first antinomy we explore is between conceptualizing the state as in- tervening into the economic order and the state as participating within the economic order. To do this we return briefly to consider the Cameralist ori- gins of the theory of public finance, and to contrast the Cameralist approach with that of their classical British contemporaries, particularly Adam Smith. The second antinomy is between treating the state as some maximizing agent and treating the state as an institutional framework within which myriad indi- vidual agents interact. The primary historical figures who represent this second antinomy are the British economist Francis Edgeworth (1897) and the Swedish economistKnut Wicksell (1896). For Edgeworth, public finance was a choice- theoretic enterprise, with the policy choices of a state being assimilated to the market choices of an individual. In sharp contrast, Wicksell treated pub- lic finance as a catallactic enterprise, where the state provided an institutional framework within which individuals with differing values and preferences in- teracted. The extent to which those interactions proved generally beneficial to everyone, as against providing gains to some and losses to others, depended on the institutional frameworkwithin which political participants interacted with one another. These two antinomies can in principle generate a four-fold description of analytical possibilities. A model of an interventionist state can in principle be developed within either a choice-theoretic or a catallactic framework. Simi- larly, a model of a participative state can be developed within either a choice- theoretic or a catallactic framework. For the most part, however, the inter- ventionist state has been assimilated to a choice-theoretic framework, and with the participative state being assimilated to a catallactic framework. In the remainder of this opening essay, we will first illustrate the intervention- participation antinomy as it is found in the formulations of the Cameralists and the British Classicals. Then we use Edgeworth and Wicksell to illustrate the antinomy between the choice-theoretic and the catallactical approaches to public finance. We close this essay by briefly describing the essays that com- prise this Handbook. 1. THE CAMERALIST ORIGINS OF PUBLIC FINANCE The cameralists emerged around 1500, and were mostly located in the German-speaking lands. By the time they had disappeared by the middle of the 19th century, they had amassed a collective bibliography of more than 14,000