This paper discusses the role that the economics of uncertainty has played in the theory of public finance. From being mostly concerned with its choice-theoretic foundations in the 1950s and ‘60s, the theory of expected utility maximization and risk averse behaviour has contributed decisively...

This essay is written for a Festschrift to commemorate Jürgen Backhaus's contributions to political economy on the occasion of his retirement from the University of Erfurt. Jürgen is a penetrating and wide-ranging scholar from whom I have learned much since we first met in 1974. It would be...