1. Paul A. Samuelson, “The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure,”Review of Economics and Statistics 36 (November 1954): 387–89; and idem, Paul A. Samuelson, “A Diagrammatic Exposition of a Theory of Public Expenditure,”Review of Economics and Statistics 37 (November 1955): 350–56.
2. Randall G. Holcombe,Public Finance: Government Revenues and Expenditures in the United States Economy (St. Paul, Minn.: West Publishers, 1996), esp. chap. 5. This is an undergraduate public-finance textbook which discusses and explains the definition of public goods in detail, and raises some of the questions about public goods that are the subject of this paper.
3. Richard A. Musgrave,The Theory of Public Finance (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959), p. 44. In his classic public-finance treatise, Musgrave uses a somewhat tautological definition that fits the pre-Samuelson concept, defining public goods as “goods the inherent quality of which requires public production.” He gives education and the military as examples, and defends them in a commonsense way by noting that there are compelling reasons for having both produced in the public sector. Of course, one might disagree with his assessment, but the point here is that prior to Samuelson's definition, public goods were thought of more generally (and less rigorously) as goods that are produced by government. See also the discussion by Dennis Epple and Richard E. Romano, “Public Provision of Private Goods,”Journal of Political Economy 104, no. 1 (February 1996): 57–84, on private goods produced by government, and how the mainstream economic literature has been won over to Samuelson's definition, and away from Musgrave's
4. Samuelson, “The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure”; and idem Samuelson, “A Diagrammatic Exposition of a Theory of Public Expenditure.”
5. Ibid Samuelson, “The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure”; and Idem Samuelson, “A Diagrammatic Exposition of a Theory of Public Expenditure.”