Providing infrastructure for a future state: Reading Herzl's Der Judenstaat in 1996

Theodor Herzl's Der Judenstaat, published in 1896, laid the intellectual foundations for the future state of Israel. His hope was to create for the Jews of Europe a country where they could live without suffering discrimination and deprivation of vertical mobility. This article focuses on Herzl's views of the means and ends of creating the social overhead capital or infrastructure of such a future country. A century ago, before Herzl, the strategic role of the public goods in the economic development process had not been sufficiently recognized.