The transformation of public economics research 1970–2000.pdf

Journal of Public Economics 86 (2002) 319–326 /locate/econbase The transformation of public economics research: q 1970–2000 1 Martin Feldstein National Bureau of Econimic Research, 1050 Massechusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-5398, USA Abstract The nature and content of research and teaching in public economics have changed enormously during the past three decades. The field is more theoretically rigorous, more empirical, more focused on real policy issues, and more concerned with government spending as well as with taxation. For me, it has been an exciting time to be a public finance economist and to contribute to this intellectual transformation.  2002 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Theoretical beginnings When I began studying public finance as a graduate student in England in the early 1960s, the bible of the field was Richard Musgrave’s The Theory of Public Finance (1959). Unlike earlier books by authors like Pigou (1947) which were characterized by prose unencumbered by diagrams and algebra, most of the Musgrave volume looked like a standard price theory book with graphs and algebra showing the partial equilibrium effects of taxes on prices and quantities qThis essay, written for the 30th Anniversary of the Journal of Public Economics, focuses on research that has been described in the English language and therefore primarily on wor