The Public Financiers is the sixth book in a series of discussions about the great minds in the history and theory of finance. While the series addresses the contributions of scholars in our understanding of modern finance, this volume addresses the development of public finance as a field of thought through the twentieth century.

Public finance received little attention from English language scholars until the latter half of the 20th Century. From that time the discipline blossomed, and new thinkers added substantially to existing study and research. New perspectives on rents and profits, the burden of public finance and the mathematics of optimal taxation introduced a new field of thought within public finance.

This book explores the great public financiers who brought the discipline back into popularity and described how tax systems can interact with economies with minimal distortion. It introduces the work of David Ricardo, Henry George, John Bates Clark, Frank Ramsey, William Vickrey, and James Mirrlees, who each added new insight to public finance. The book also examines the work of Knut Wicksell, Richard Musgrave, James Buchanan, Charles Tiebout and Joseph Stiglitz, who established how government can be designed to provide the public goods a modern economy demands. The author explains how the contributions of these great minds combined to equip modern thinkers with the intuition and knowledge necessary to account for and even drive the growing federal states of the 20th Century.

Colin Read is a professor of Economics and Finance, former Dean of the School of Business and Economics at The State University of New York at Plattsburgh (SUNY), USA, and a columnist for the Plattsburgh New York Press Republican newspaper. He has a Ph.D. in Economics, J.D. in Law, M.B.A., Master's of Taxation, and has taught environmental and energy economics and finance for 25 years. Colin's recent books include BP and the Macondo Spill: The Complete Story, The Fear Factor, Global Financial Meltdown: How We Can Avoid the Next Economic Crisis, The Rise and Fall of an Economic Empire: With Lessons for Aspiring Nations, Great Minds in Finance - The Life Cyclists, Great Minds in Finance - The Portfolio Theorists, Great Minds in Finance - The Efficient Market Hypothesists, and Great Minds in Finance - The Rise of the Quants, Great Minds in Finance - the Corporate Financiers'.