Public Goods and Private Wants: A Psychological Approach to Government Spending

How valuable to us are the activities of government? Public Goods and Private Wants explores psychological approaches to public economics in order to answer this question.

The contributions of economists and political scientists to the study of government spending are discussed, and subjective measures, largely derived from psychology, that could be used to evaluate government spending are considered. The author then uses empirical studies to explain how people value government goods and se...