Valuing publicly provided services

Decisions about expenditure on health, education and other publicly provide d services require choices regarding how much of our collective income we s hould allocate to these services and which services should be given priorit y. The attempt to answer this question has stimulated many developments in economic theory and practice, from human capital theory to systems of exten ded national accounts. This paper is a brief survey of some of the most imp ortant ideas, with reference to their implications for Australian public po licy.