The sixteen essays in this book were written to celebrate the ninetieth birthday of Richard Musgrave and to commemorate the tenth anniversary of CES, the Center for Economic Studies at the University of Munich. Musgrave is considered to be a founding father or modern public economics. He belongs...

In recent years the welfare state has come under attack from economists, and in many OECD countries there have been calls for spending on the welfare state to be rolled back. Critics argue that the size of transfer programs is responsible for a decline in economic performance and that cuts in...