International audienceThis paper provides a narrative of the emergence of the standard textbook definition of public goods. It focuses on Richard A. Musgrave’s contribution in defining public goods as nonrival and nonexcludable—from 1937 to 1973. Although Samuelson’s mathematical definition is generally used in models of public goods, the qualitative understanding of the specificity of pure public goods owes a lot to Musgrave. I argue that the evolution of Musgrave’s writings on public goods reflects his intention to justify his view of the role of the state in providing goods and services to citizens with an argument that would be convincing to the community of U.S. economists in the mid-twentieth century. Musgrave’s definition highlights his lifelong concern for a comprehensive, realistic, and useful normative theory of the public sector

International audienceIn his Theory of Public Finance (1959), Musgrave invented the concept of merit wants to describe public wants that are satisfied by goods provided by the government in violation of the principle of consumer sovereignty. Starting from Musgrave’s mature discussion (1987), I construct two categories to classify the explanations of merit goods. The first strand of thought attempts to justify merit goods within the New welfare economics, by modifying its assumptions to accommodate irrationality, uncertainty, lack of information, and psychic externalities. The second category encompasses more radical departures from consumer sovereignty, drawn from philosophical critiques of economics. In the third part of the paper, I argue that the two strands might be represented by a non-individualistic social welfare function. I also show how this solution echoes Musgrave’s early views on public expenditures before he coined the concept of merit wants. From an historical perspective, the survival of the concept highlights the persistence of a social point of view in welfare economics

International audienceThis paper assesses James M. Buchanan's claim of following a positive approach in stark contrast to the normative approach to public finance of Richard A. Musgrave. The goal of this paper is to shed light on the foundations of modern American public finance by analysing one aspect of the methodology of its two most prominent fathers. I show (1) that it is difficult to distinguish Musgrave's and Buchanan's theories of public goods along the positive/normative dividing line and (2) that Buchanan's theory can also be considered normative. In the first three parts, I follow the Weberian methodological tradition in looking for value judgements in the theories, and by reflecting on the nature of ideal types. In the last part, I propose a broader interpretation of Buchanan's methodological stance within the academic context of the 1960s

This article examines the meaning of consumers’ sovereignty in the interwar thought of the economist William Harold Hutt. For Hutt, consumers’ sovereignty was an ideal, a norm against which economists could assess different economic systems. It connected the value of individual freedom, the commitment to a market society and an appeal to a liberal democracy. By coining the expression of consumers’ sovereignty, Hutt operated a creative re-description of the Millian idea of individual sovereignty which reflected the rise of the figure of the consumer in the public space. Hutt’s vision had been forged by the teaching he received at the London School of Economics and his involvement in the Individualist movement in the 1920s.