JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.As many a student has discovered during the first few sessions of a course in public finance, the course title is somewhat deceptive, for it is not a course in finance but in economics. Nor is the course solely concerned with the sources of revenue that finance government activities; the student must also expect a lengthy treatment of government expenditures. Students expecting to discover the relationship between taxation and inflation or unemployment, however, will probably be disappointed.Part of the problem could be resolved by offering a more descriptive title. Two of the thirteen texts under review use the term public sector economics in preference to public finance. But this would still be misleading to those anticipating coverage of macroeconomic issues. Because most of the texts devote less than 3 percent of the contents to macro public finance, perhaps the most appropriate title would be "The Microeconomics of the Public Sector."Although currently a misnomer, public finance aptly described the subject matter of earlier texts. Nineteenth-century British and American Roger S. Hewett is an associate professor of economics at Drake University.
Fall 1987
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