Kautilya on Public Goods and Taxation

In times of trouble, the fort provides a haven to the people and the king himself. —Kautilya, The Arthashastra, 7.14.20 (4th century BCE) Joseph Schumpeter (1954) offered a very unflattering view of the con-tributions of ancient Chinese and Greek thinkers to economic analy-sis. It is apparent by now that he committed many errors of omission and commission. For example, Young Back Choi (1989) points out that Schumpeter discussed the contributions only of Chinese moral philoso-phers and omitted the contributions of the legalist Han Feitzu (280–233 BCE), who advanced many modern ideas related to “public choice vari-ety. ” Similarly, the pioneering work of S. Todd Lowry (1987) has refuted the judgments of Schumpeter regarding the contributions of the Greeks and also has challenged his views on the methodology and scope of eco-nomics, such as his exclusion of ethical and administrative issues from economics.