ABSTRACT
In many books on public finance, particularly in Essays on Taxation, The Shifting and Incidence of Taxation and Progressive Taxation, Seligman attempts the histories of taxes as well as of ideas on public finance. The pure theory of public finance with which the neoclassical economists were concerned attempted to clarify the relationship between the principles of equity and these foundations of taxation. The first part of this chapter shows the economic foundations of the neo-classical theory of public finance. The second part of the chapter examines some of the more specific contributions made to public finance through the Economic Journal. The neo-classical theory of public finance grew out of the classical theory of public finance; but it also broke away from it. It briefly examined the latter and indicated the limits to which the neo-classical writers wanted to push it in the extension of income taxation.
