Paul Samuelson, Diagrammatic Exposition of a Theory of Public Expenditure, Review of Economics and Statistics, 37(4):350-356, 1955

Paul Samuelson, Aspects of Public Expenditure Theories, Review of Economics and Statistics, 40(4):332-338, 1958

Erik Lindahl, Just Taxation--A Positive Solution, in Classics in the Theory of Public Finance, edited by R. Musgrave and A. Peacock

Theodore Bergstrom and Richard Cornes, Independence of Allocative Efficiency from Distribution in the Theory of Public Goods, Econometrica, 51(6):1753-1765, 1983

Lectures 1, 2, 3, and 4 from Bergstrom's Lecture Notes on Public Economics

Remarks on Readings in this section

 Urs Schweitzer, Externalities and the Coase Theorem: Hypothesis or Result?  Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 144:245-266, 1988

Garrett Hardin, The tragedy of the Commons, Science, 144:245-266, 1968

Theodore Bergstrom, Regulation of Externalities, Journal of Public Economics, 5:131-138, 1976

Richard Schmalensee, et. al., An Interim Evaluation of Sulphur Dioxide Emissions Trading, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 12(3):53-68, 1998

Lectures 5 and 6 from Bergstrom's Lectures on Public Economics

Remarks on Readings in this Section

The Coase article is another classic that every student of public finance should read.  Schweitzer's article presents a fine modern interpretation of Coase's ideas.  Schweizer's piece is also an excellent introduction to mechanism design theory. 
 

William Vickrey, Congestion Theory and Transport Investment, American Economic Review, 59:251-260, 1969

Richard Arnott, Andrew de Palma, and Robin Lindsey, A Structural Model of Peak-Period Congestion: A Traffic Bottleneck with Elastic Demand, American Economic Review 83: pages161-179 1993 

Richard Arnott and Ken Small, The Economics of Traffic Congestion, American Scientist 82: pages 446-455, 1994.

Jam Today, Road Pricing Tomorrow The Economist, December 6, 1997

London's Congestion Pricing 
More on London Traffic

Southern California congestion pricing

Hal Varian and Jeffrey Mackie-Mason Economics of the Internet, 1994 

Public goods theory has a lot to say about new economic problems that have arisen in the "information age." Several related papers and links can be found on Hal Varian's web page.

Remarks on Readings in this Section

I believe that the economics of congestion is a very promising area for further research. Two areas in which there are very important practical applications are traffic congestion and congestion on computer networks. In my opinion neither of these areas has received the attention from economists that is merited by its importance and interest. Both seems to me areas in which economic theory and econometrics are likely to be powerful tools.

Vickrey's papers are full of clever  insights. The papers by Arnott and his coauthors develop these ideas with skill and elegance.
 

Jonathan Levin and Barry Nalebuff,  An Introduction to Vote-Counting Schemes, Journal of Economic Perspectives,  9(1): 3-26, 1995

Hugo Sonnenschein, The Economics of Incentives: An Introductory Account, Nancy Schwartz Memorial Lecture, J. L. Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 1983 

Theodore Bergstrom, When Does Majority Rule Supply Public Goods Efficiently? Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 216-226, 1979

Timothy Feddersen and Wolfgang Pesendorfer, The Swing Voter's Curse, American Economic Review, 1996, vol 86, pp408-426

Tom Palfrey and Richard McKelvey An Experimental Study of Jury Decision Rule, Cal Tech working paper, 1997 

Andrew Caplin and Barry Nalebuff, On 64%-Majority Rule, Econometrica, Vol. 56, No. 4. (Jul., 1988), pp. 787-814.

Theodore Bergstrom and Robert Goodman, Private Demands for Public Goods,
American Economic Review,  Vol. 63, No. 3. (Jun., 1973), pp. 280-296.

Arye L. Hillman and John Riley,  Politically Contestable Rents and Transfers,  UCLA working paper, September, 1987

Decisions and Elections,  Donald G. Saari, Cambridge University Press, 2001

A good place to look for more discussion  and references on voting theory (and tips on ice-fishing technique and sauna etiquette) is     Don Saari's home page 
 

James Andreoni and Theodore Bergstrom,  Do government subsidies increase the private supply of public goods?  Public Choice, 1997 (pdf file) (postscript file)

Mark Bagnoli and Bart Lipman, Implementing the Core Through Private Contributions,  Review of Economic Studies, October, 1989, pp 583-601

John Morgan Financing Public Goods by Means of Lotteries Review of Economic Studies,  2000

John Morgan Funding Public Goods with Lotteries: An Experiment Working Paper, 1998

Theodore Bergstrom, Puzzles: Love and Spaghetti, The Opportunity Cost of Virtue, The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 3, No. 2. (Spring, 1989), pp. 165-173.

Eduardo Ley, On the Private Provision of Public Goods, A Diagrammatic Approach, Investigaciones Economicas,  20(1): 691-704, 1996

Jim Andreoni's home page Jim Andreoni has written a whole slew of nice papers about charitable giving, theory, empirical work, and experimental work. This is the first place to look if you want to learn more about this subject.
 

James Andreoni and John Miller, Analyzing Choice with Revealed Preference: Is Altruism Rational?, University of Wisconsin working paper, June 1998

James Andreoni and Rachel Croson Partners versus Strangers: The Effect of Random Rematching in Public Goods Experiment, University of Wisconsin working paper, June 1998 

Tom Palfrey and Jeffrey Prisbey, Anomalous Behavior in Public Goods Experiments, How Much and Why?, to appear, American Economic Review

Theodore Bergstrom. Commentary on Rader and Foster-Sonnenschein in Economics with No Special Technology by Trout Rader, Input-Output Publishing Company pp 179-182

Paul Samuelson.Public goods and subscription tv: Correction of the record. Journal of Law and Economics 71:81--84, 1964

William Oakland, Public Goods, Perfect Competition, and Underproduction,  Journal of Political Economy, 82(5), 927-939, 1974

Geoffrey Brennan and Cliff Walsh, A Monopoly Model of Public Goods Provision: The Uniform Pricing Case The American Economic Review, 71(1):196-206,1981

Dagobert L. Brito, William H. Oakland, On the Monopolistic Provision of Excludable Public Goods The American Economic Review, 70(4):691-704, 1980

Michael E. Burns and Cliff Walsh, Market Provision of Price-excludable Public Goods: A General Analysis The Journal of Political Economy, 89(1):166-191, 1981

Michael Spence, Monopoly, Quality and Regulation,  The Bell Journal of Economics,  6(1) 417-429, 1975

Michele Boldrin and David Levine,  Why Napster is right, web publication

Ted Bergstrom and Carl Bergstrom The costs and benefits of library site licenses to academic journals  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Jan 20,
2004, pp 897-904

Ted Bergstrom Free Labor for Costly Journals? , Journal of Economic Perspectives ,
Fall 2001