Public finance is the study of the role of the government in the economy.

The purview of public finance is considered to be threefold: governmental effects on (1) efficient allocation of resources, (2) distribution of income, and (3) macroeconomic stabilization.

The proper role of government provides a starting point for the analysis of public finance. In theory, under certain circumstances, private markets will allocate goods and services among individuals efficiently (in the sense that no waste occurs and that individual tastes are matching with the economy's productive abilities). If private markets were able to provide efficient outcomes and if the distribution of income were socially acceptable, then there would be little or no scope for government. In many cases, however, conditions for private market efficiency are violated. For example, if many people can enjoy the same good at the same time (non-rival, non-excludable consumption), then private markets may supply too little of that good. National defense is one example of non-rival consumption, or of a public good.

Walter Edward Block (born 21 August 1941) is an Austrian School of economics economist and anarcho-capitalist.

Block was born in Brooklyn, New York to Abraham Block, a certified public accountant, and Ruth Block, a paralegal, both of whom Block has said were liberals. He earned his undergraduate degree in Philosophy summa cum laude from Brooklyn College, where he was a member of the varsity swimming team. Block earned his Ph.D. degree in economics from Columbia University and wrote his dissertation on rent control.^{[citation needed]} Block, who is of Jewish background, self-identifies as a "devout atheist".

Block's early thinking life was characterized by egalitarian thought. In an interview by the Austrian Economics Newsletter, Block stated, "In the fifties and sixties, I was just another commie living in Brooklyn." Block credits his "conversion" to Libertarianism to personal meetings with Ayn Rand while he was an undergraduate student. Alan Greenspan was in attendance at some of these meetings. As Block describes it, "In 1963, when I was a senior at Brooklyn College, Ayn Rand came there to give a lecture. I attended, along with about 3,000 of my fellow mainly leftish students, in order to boo and hiss her, since she was evil incarnate. Afterward, the president of the group that had invited her to campus announced there was to be a luncheon in her honor, and anyone was welcome to take part, whether or not they agreed with her ideas. Not having had enough booing and hissing at Ayn in her formal lecture, I decided to avail myself of this opportunity to further express my displeasure with her and her views."

Ted Gayer is an American economist. He is an associate professor at Georgetown Public Policy Institute and previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Microeconomic Analysis at the Department of the Treasury and as a Senior Economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers. He is also a member of the EPA’s Science Advisory Board and has served on the EPA’s Superfund Benefits Analysis Advisory Committee and as an expert evaluator of the natural resources management indicator for the Millennium Challenge Corporation.From 1999 to 2001, Professor Gayer was a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of California, Berkeley. In the summer of 2006 he was a Lone Mountain Fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center. From 2006 to 2007 he was a visiting fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, and from 2004 to 2006 he was a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

His work has been published in the Review of Economics and Statistics, Science, the Journal of Economic Literature, the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, the Journal of Human Resources, the Journal of Regulatory Economics, Regulation, and other journals. He has also co-edited (with W. Kip Viscusi) the two-volume Classics in Risk Management and has co-authored (with Harvey Rosen) the textbook Public Finance, 8th edition.

Harvey S. Rosen (born 29 March 1949, Chicago, Illinois) is the John L. Weinberg Professor of Economics and Business Policy at Princeton University. His research focuses on public finance. He attended the University of Michigan for his undergraduate studies and Harvard University for graduate studies. Harvard professor and former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Greg Mankiw credits Rosen as one of four mentors who taught him how to practice economics, along with Alan Blinder, Larry Summers, and Stanley Fischer.

He was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers from 2003–2005, and he served as Chairman in 2005.

He served as the chairman of the Department of Economics at Princeton from 1993-1996.

He also served as Master of Princeton's Whitman College from its founding in 2007 until 2011, when he was replaced by Sandra Bermann.