ABSTRACT
This chapter serves as a presentation and preview of what is discussed in the rest of the book. It starts by making one observation: almost all economies today are mixed economies, which means that although they are organized on the basis of a market model, the public sector maintains a significant role in that organization. Such state activity, rather than intervention, is usually analysed through a piecemeal approach, one that should be altered. A rigorous study of state activity in a modern economy must start with studying what causes the state to occasionally arrogate the power to supplant or complement the market, which is followed by an analysis of the specific functions that it assumes in those cases and which culminates in an examination of the instruments that it employs to carry out those functions. Why, what for and how are the three basic questions that must always be answered.
