Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
Concern with various potential sources of market failure, of which the topics treated in this book are important examples, has a long history, dating back at least to the writings of Adam Smith and David Hume in the eighteenth century. Recent years have witnessed a tremendous growth in this literature and, one hopes, a significant advance in our understanding of the principal issues. The study of market failure continues to increase in importance and is germane to many transnational exigencies, including global warming, ozone shield depletion, deforestation, species preservation, acid deposition, the spread of deserts, and the containment of nuclear waste. To some extent, notions of market failure and their analyses are germane to every subfield of economics. Obvious instances include environmental economics, agricultural economics, public choice, urban economics, international trade, labor economics, health economics, and defense economics. Much of the material on market failure is scattered throughout the economic journals, and some of it is technically demanding. At the same time, textbooks in microeconomics and public economics are able, by their very nature, to offer only a tantalizingly brief treatment of the nature and implications of externalities.
This book provides a more extended discussion of the theory and policy implications of externalities, with particular emphasis on those special cases represented by public goods and club goods. We discuss the main conceptual issues and use mathematical techniques only as much as necessary to pursue the economic argument.
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- The Theory of Externalities, Public Goods, and Club Goods , pp. xvii - xxPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996