ABSTRACT
The history of world civilization and of economic growth is the history of the emergence of institutions that support the provision of ‘public goods’. The mechanisms for providing public goods secure the internalization of external costs of private maximizing behaviour, and reduce costs of transactions amongst citizens and between citizens and the state. Each new period in human material progress has required development of new mechanisms to provide public goods, allowing expansion of the division of labour amongst larger numbers of people in more disparate locations.
