Public goods can be financed by direct taxation or a subsidy to private spending. This paper examines the relative efficiency and distributional consequences of the two methods. Efficiency is shown to depend on the price elasticity of private spending and the trade- off between public and private spending. When this trade-off is dollar for dollar, however, a subsidy is always more efficient than direct taxation. The gains from a subsidy are larger for a mixed good than for a pure public good. Looking a t distributional effects, the author shows when richer taxpayers may prefer a tax credit to deductibility, even though they face lower prices with deductibility, and also shows when richer taxpayers prefer direct taxation to either type of subsidy.

It is argued that the received interpretation of Frank Knight's_(1921) classic risk-uncertainty distinction-as concerning whether or not agents have subjective probabilities-constitutes a misreading of Knight. On the contrary, Knight shared the modern view that agents can be assumed always to act as if they have subjective probabilities. The authors document their contention that by uncert ainty Knight instead meant situations in which insurance markets collapse because of moral hazard or adverse selection. Knight's discussion of market failure, a lthough always informal and in placesinaccurate, was in many respects a remarka ble anticipation of the modern literature.

In this paper, a general-equilibrium business- cycle model is construct ed that, when subjected to real disturbances, mimics observed qualita tive comovements among real output, money, business failures, risk pr emia, intermediary loans, and prices. In contrast, monetary disturban ces generate cycles that have several inconsistencies with empirical evidence, thus providing support for real business-cycle theory at th e expense of monetary theories of the business cycle. Financial inter mediation arises endogenously in the model and intermediation matters for business-cycle behavior. A credit supply mechanism acts in tande m with an intertemporal substitution effect in propagating stochastic disturbances.