The International Economic Association was founded in 1950 as an NGO at the instigation of the Social Sciences Department of UNESCO. It maintains information and consultative relations with UNESCO. It is a federation of national economic associations and committees representing economists. Its aim from the beginning has been to promote understanding among economists in different parts of the world through mutual contact, common research programmes and through publications of an international character on problems of current importance. Professor Sir Alan Peacock, author of the introduction to this collection, is currently Honorary Research Professor in Public Finance at the Edinburgh Business School. He is one of the UK's best-known experts on the economics of public finance, publishing more than 30 books and 200 articles. In addition to holding academic posts at the London School of Economics, the Universities of Edinburgh and York, and the Independent University of Buckingham, where he was the first Vice Chancellor, he has had a long and distinguished career as economic advisor to governments, the OECD, the IMF and the UN. He was one of the guiding editors of the IEA Papers when they were first published in the 1950s.