Forty Years of Public Economics: A Personal Perspective
以个人视角回顾公共经济学四十年发展，强调理论与应用的互动，指出理论源于实践但经济学家难以有效结合二者，并讨论该学科的成功、细分及与宏观经济学的关系。
This paper presents a personal perspective on the field of public economics with emphasis on the interplay of theory and applications. In the early 1950s, theoretical developments grew out of practical applications. Yet, few economists succeed in creatively linking theory to real problems and our professional organization fails to promote adequately such contributions. The author also discusses briefly the success of public economics, its fragmentation into subfields, and its relation to macroeconomics. The writing of this paper was prompted by the author's participation in editing a volume of selected papers by William Vickrey, whose work is exemplary of the perspective presented here.