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Alvin Hansen and John Williams’ Fiscal Policy Seminar at Harvard University is widely regarded as a key mechanism for the spread of Keynesianism in the United States. An original and regular participant, Richard A. Musgrave was invited to prepare remarks for the fiftieth anniversary of the seminar in 1988. These were never published, though a copy was filed with Musgrave’s papers at Princeton University. Their reproduction here is important for several reasons. First, it is one of the last reminiscences of the original participants. Second, the remarks make an important contribution to our understanding of the Harvard School of macro-fiscal policy. Third, the remarks provide interesting insights into Musgrave’s views on national economic policymaking as well as the intersection between theory and practice. The reminiscence demonstrates the importance of the seminar in shifting Musgrave’s research focus and moving him to a more pragmatic approach to public finance.

In a recent paper (Fiorito & Vernengo, 2009), the present writers have dealt with John Maurice Clark's contribution to macroeconomics in the 1930s with a special, but not exclusive, emphasis on its relationship to the Keynesian revolution. The general framework of Clark's aggregate analysis can be traced in a series of scattered contributions centering on the efficacy and consequences of countercyclical fiscal policy. Albeit offering a qualified support for a program of public works, Clark was concerned with the inflationary consequences of Keynesian policies, once the economy approached full employment. Clark was also dissatisfied with those interpretations of the income flow analysis, which came to be known as “Hydraulic Keynesianism” that led to the development of the so-called neoclassical synthesis.

This chapter discusses the evolution of German views on public debt 1850–1920, referring to three strands of secondary literature: (1) German retrospectives on public finance, (2) the historical literature with a public choice perspective, and (3) contributions to public/constitutional law, mainly referring to Lorenz von Stein. The skeptic view of public debt endorsed by authors of the second half of the period is shown to be related to politico-economic issues of state agency combined with new state functions, rather than to the rejection of Dietzel’s Proto-Keynesian macroeconomic reasoning.

Introduction − Covid-19, which first emerged in Wuhan, People’s Republic of China, in January 2020, with an unknown source, spread to all countries of the world very quickly and caused the death of over two million people world-wide. This ever-increasing global need for health care has created a radical transformation in terms of not only in health care, but also in all public services. Transportation services for the transfer of patients to health institutions, education services due to the dangers of face-to-face training, justice services due to the postponement of non-urgent court proceedings, security services in terms of restriction sanctions and all public services in general due to the disruption of access to public services due to flexible working hours applied to public personnel has entered into an unplanned provision.

Purpose: The aim of this chapter is to identify the problems that arise in the provision of public goods and services due to the global epidemic of Covid-19, and to bring a new interpretation to the theoretical discussions about the optimal delivery level of public services when there is a situation of communicable disease.

Methodology: The principles of public goods and service provision of G20 countries, Covid-19 mortality rates, indicators of the well-being of healthcare delivery such as the number of bed and personnel, the type and number of devices used to diagnose the Covid disease, and the public service restrictions taken to eliminate Covid-19, have been evaluated by employing descriptive analysis. In order to prevent income and advanced levels from becoming distinctive features, G20 countries with similar income and development levels were selected for this research.

Findings: Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a distortion in the preference of provision of almost all public goods, and it has been observed that the delivery level of public services affects each other since all are linked like a chain. Failure to achieve what is expected from international organizations, which should be in a regulatory position in this regard, has increased concerns about the optimal presentation level of all public goods, especially health, in the future. As long as there is a global pandemic and countries do not take effective measures, a bad second best position that is far from optimal results but provides that instant solutions.

Every paper needs a theme. Luckily, the venue defines the theme for me; how did the initial conditions at Stanford affect the development and diffusion of population ecology as a theoretical research program. I use the term theoretical research program reluctantly, especially considering the context of the department of sociology at Stanford University during the 1970s and 1980s (Lakatos & Musgrave, 1970). Nonetheless, I believe that population ecology can be usefully described as such. It is not a theory but rather a collection of theories developing over time with progressive problem shifts. There are methodological rules that define what paths of research to pursue and to avoid (Pfeffer, 1993, p. 613).

This paper provides a reappreciation of the second edition of Carl Menger’s Principles. It reconstructs his new theory of needs, which for Menger analytically precedes the valuation of goods. It is argued that this new theory of needs provides a possible bridge between economics and the natural sciences. It provided important conceptual tools for the interwar work of Ludwig von Mises on praxeology and Friedrich Hayek on expectations and plans. The new first chapter also contains a theory of collective needs, which is contextualized in the broader German-language debate over private and public provision of goods. It is demonstrated that Menger’s approach to collective needs, and the jointness of consumption is in tension with the later Samuelson/Musgrave conception of public goods, and compatible with the institutional theories in this field of James Buchanan and Vincent and Elinor Ostrom.