Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Market performance : possibilities and prescriptions -- Externalities -- Public goods -- Collective decision-making : searching for the "public interest" -- Rent-seeking, public provision and the "return to the market" -- Evaluation of public expenditure : cost--benefit analysis -- Tax theory : the basic concepts -- Tax evasion and the black economy -- Income (re)distribution -- Central government -- Public choice aspects of macroeconomic policies -- Fiscal federalism -- International issues in public finance -- Public sector failure and public expenditure growth -- Optimal taxation -- Towards a "new" public finance economics : experiments, behaviour, neuro-imaging and "individual failure".