Some goods and services seem to be fundamentally public, such as legislation, criminal punishment, and fighting wars. By contrast, other functions, such as garbage collection, do not. This volume brings together prominent scholars from a range of academic fields - including law, economics, philosophy, and sociology - to address the core question of what makes a certain good or service fundamentally public and why. Sometimes, governments and other public entities are superior because they are more likely to get at the right decisions or follow fair procedures. In other instances, the provision of goods and services by public entities is intrinsically valuable. By analyzing the these answers, the authors also explore the nature of the state and its authority. This handbook explores influential arguments for and against privatization and also develops a number of key studies explaining, justifying, or challenging the legitimacy and the desirability of public provision of particular goods and services.

This volume explores the questions of what makes some goods and services fundamentally public and why.

About the Author
Avihay Dorfman is a professor of Law at the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law. His research areas include private law theory, legal theory, and political philosophy. Alon Harel is the Mizock Chair in Administrative and Criminal Law at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a member of Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality. He specializes in political and legal theory as well as constitutional law theory.


Book Information
ISBN 9781009295703
Author Avihay Dorfman
Format Paperback
Page Count 313
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 589g