Market failure, conceived of as the failure of the market to bring about results that are in the best interests of society as a whole, has a long lineage in the history of writings on matters economic. The goal of the present volume is to explore the contexts within which “modern” (i.e., twentieth-century) notions of market failure were developed. The idea that markets could fail to perform in ways that best promoted the larger interests of society is as old as economics itself, and the question of the appropriate scope to be given to private action and to its collective alternative is one of the most crucial issues with which economic thinkers have had to grapple. Nevertheless, our understanding of the contexts—social, political, and intellectual—in which discussions and debates about market failure have played out remains limited and imperfect. It is our hope that the present volume will go some way toward addressing this lacuna, both directly and by stimulating additional scholarship exploring this important facet of the history of economics.
The text of this article is only available as a PDF.
References
Akerlof, G. A.
1970
. “The Market for ‘Lemons’: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism.”
Quarterly Journal of Economics
84
:477
–500
.Backhaus, J. G.; Wagner, R. E..
2005
. “From Continental Public Finance to Public Choice: Mapping Continuity.”
In The Role of Government in the History of Economic Thought
, edited by Medema, S. G.; Boettke, P.. History of Political Economy
37
(supplement
): 314
–32
.Backhouse, R. E.
2015
. “Revisiting Samuelson's Foundations of Economic Analysis.”
Journal of Economic Literature
53
:326
–50
.Bator, F. M.
1957
. “The Simple Analytics of Welfare Maximization.”
American Economic Review
47
:22
–59
.———.
1958
. “The Anatomy of Market Failure.”
Quarterly Journal of Economics
72
:351
–79
.Bertrand, E.
2010
. “The Three Roles of the Coase Theorem in Coase's Works.”
European Journal of the History of Economic Thought
17
:975
–1000
.Boettke, P. J.; Marciano, A..
2014
. “Ethics, Self-Interest, and the Limits of Spatial Competition: Why Did Buchanan Criticize Tiebout?”
Working paper
, Université de Montpellier 1
.Buchanan, J. M.
1960
. “La Scienza delle finanze: The Italian Tradition in Fiscal Theory.”
In Fiscal Theory and Political Economy: Selected Essays
. Chapel Hill
: University of North Carolina Press
.Buchanan, J. M.; Stubblebine, W. C..
1962
. “Externality.”
Economica
29
:371
–84
.Campbell, D.; Klaes, M..
2005
. “The Principle of Institutional Direction: Coase's Regulatory Critique of Intervention.”
Cambridge Journal of Economics
29
:263
–88
.Coase, R. H.
1959
. “The Federal Communications Commission.”
Journal of Law and Economics
2
:1
–40
.Demsetz, H.
1964
. “The Exchange and Enforcement of Property Rights.”
Journal of Law and Economics
7
:11
–26
.———.
1966
. “Some Aspects of Property Rights.”
Journal of Law and Economics
9
:61
–70
.Eusepi, G.; Wagner, R. E..
2012
. “Tax Prices in a Democratic Polity: The Continuing Relevance of Antonio de Viti de Marco.”
History of Political Economy
45
(1
): 99
–121
.Fontaine, P.
2014
. “Free Riding.”
Journal of the History of Economic Thought
36
:359
–76
.Giraud, Y.
2014
. “Negotiating the ‘Middle-of-the-Road’ Position: Paul Samuelson, MIT, and the Politics of Textbook Writing, 1945–55.”
In MIT and the Transformation of American Economics
, edited by Roy Weintraub, E.. History of Political Economy
46
(supplement
): 134
–52
.King, C. L.
1913
. “Municipal Markets.”
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
50
:102
–17
.Kneese, A. V.
1971
. “Environmental Pollution: Economics and Policy.”
American Economic Review
61
:153
–66
.Ledyard, J. O.
2008
. “Market Failure.”
In The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics
, edited by Durlauf, Steven N.; Blume, Lawrence E., 2nd ed. London
: Palgrave Macmillan
. doi:10.1057/9780230226203.1029
.Marciano, A.
2013
. “Why Market Failures Are Not a Problem: James Buchanan on Market Imperfections, Voluntary Cooperation, and Externalities.”
History of Political Economy
45
(2
): 223
–54
.———.
Forthcoming
. “Buchanan's Non-Coercive Economics for Self-Interested Individuals: Ethics, Small Groups, and the Social Contract.”
Journal of the History of Economic Thought
.Marciano, A.; Romaniuc, R..
2014
. “Accident Costs, Resource Allocation, and Individual Rationality: Blum, Kalven, and Calabresi.”
Mimeo
.Meade, J. E.
1952
. “External Economies and Diseconomies in a Competitive Situation.”
Economic Journal
62
:54
–67
.———.
2000
. “‘Related Disciplines’: The Professionalization of Public Choice Analysis.”
In Toward a History of Applied Economics
, edited by Backhouse, R. E.; Biddle, J. E.. History of Political Economy
32
(supplement
): 289
–323
.———.
2005
. “‘Marginalizing’ Government: From la Scienza delle Finanze to Wicksell.”
History of Political Economy
37
(1
): 1
–25
.———.
2009
. The Hesitant Hand: Taming Self-Interest in the History of Economic Ideas
. Princeton, N.J.
: Princeton University Press
.———.
2014
. “‘Exceptional and Unimportant’? Externalities in Economic Analysis, 1940–1959.”
Working paper
, University of Colorado Denver
.Mill, J. S.
1848
. Principles of Political Economy: With Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy
. Vol. 2
. London
: John W. Parker
.Mitchell, W. C.
1988
. “Virginia, Rochester, and Bloomington: Twenty-Five Years of Public Choice and Political Science.”
Public Choice
56
:101
–19
.Morgan, M. S.
2012
. The World in the Model
. Cambridge
: Cambridge University Press
.Morgan, M. S.; Rutherford, M., eds.
1998
. From Interwar Pluralism to Postwar Neoclassicism
. Supplemental issue to vol. 30 of History of Political Economy
. Durham, N.C.
: Duke University Press
.Musgrave, R. A.
1939
. “The Voluntary Exchange Theory of Public Economy.”
Quarterly Journal of Economics
53
:213
–37
.———.
1959
. The Theory of Public Finance
. New York
: McGraw-Hill
.Musgrave, R. A.; Peacock, A. T., eds.
1958
. Classics in the Theory of Public Finance
. London
: Macmillan
.Oates, W. E.
1969
. “The Effects of Property Taxes and Local Public Spending on Property Values: An Empirical Study of Tax Capitalization and the Tiebout Hypothesis.”
Journal of Political Economy
77
:957
–71
.———.
1932
. The Economics of Welfare
. 3rd ed. London
: Macmillan
.Samuels, W. J.
1962
. “The Physiocratic Theory of Economic Policy.”
Quarterly Journal of Economics
76
:145
–62
.Samuelson, P. A.
1947
. Foundations of Economic Analysis
. Cambridge, Mass.
: Harvard University Press
.———.
1954
. “The Pure Theory of Public Expenditure.”
Review of Economics and Statistics
36
:387
–89
.———.
1955
. “Diagrammatic Exposition of a Theory of Public Expenditure.”
Review of Economics and Statistics
37
:350
–56
.———.
1998
. “How Foundations Came to Be.”
Journal of Economic Literature
36
:1375
–86
.Smith, A.
(1776)
1976
. An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
. General editors: Campbell, R. H.; Skinner, A. S.. Textual editor: Todd, W. B.. Oxford
: Oxford University Press
.Stiglitz, J. E.
1998
. “The Private Uses of Public Interests: Incentives and Institutions.”
Journal of Economic Perspectives
12
:3
–22
.Tiebout, C. M.
1956
. “A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures.”
Journal of Political Economy
64
:416
–24
.Wagner, R. E.
1997
. “Choice, Exchange, and Public Finance.”
American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings
87
:160
–63
.———.
(1896)
1958
. “A New Principle of Just Taxation.”
In Classics in the Theory of Public Finance
, edited by Musgrave, Richard A.; Peacock, Alan T. and translated by Buchanan, J. M., 72
–118
. London
: Macmillan
.Wolf, E. R.
1955
. “Types of Latin American Peasantry: A Preliminary Discussion.”
American Anthropologist
57
:452
–71
.Wolf, E. R.; Mintz, S. W..
1957
. “Haciendas and Plantations in Middle America and the Antilles.”
Social and Economic Studies
6
:380
–412
.Copyright 2015 by Duke University Press
2015
This content is made freely available by the publisher. It may not be redistributed or altered. All rights reserved.
