Public Finance and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programs

Public finance entails two distinct research programs with incongruent hard cores. A scholar can work within both programs but not at the same instant because of that incongruity. One program sets public finance inside welfare economics. It received its canonical expression from Francis Edgeworth (1897). The other and less prominent program sets public finance inside the economic organization of society. This program received its canonical expression from Antonio de Viti de Marco’s (1888) effort to bring political activity into the social division of labor, as against standing outside that division and directing it. This second tradition flourished into the 1930s, then languished until it was revived in the 1960s under the rubric public choice. This paper uses the methodology of scientific research programs to examine the organization of inquiry within public finance, giving particular attention to the playing out of competition among scholars for scarce attention space