Even Adam Smith, often regarded as a champion of laissez-faire, recognized a need for government intervention and provision in a number of select areas, including the establishment of a justice system, the enactment and enforcement of laws, protection against invasion, and the provision of schools and other public goods. Thus, the interest in public goods, whose benefits simultaneously affect a group of individuals, can be traced back to classical economics. With the publication of Samuelson's seminal pieces (1954, 1955), research interest in public goods and in their relationships with other types of goods grew rapidly among English-speaking economists. Samuelson's contributions provided a formal foundation for ideas mentioned earlier by European economists such as Lindahl, Sax, and Wicksell (Musgrave and Peacock 1958). At first, economists focused on the two poles of a spectrum of goods, the poles consisting of pure public goods and pure private goods. Private goods could be parceled out among individuals and efficiently allocated by markets, whereas public goods could not be divided among individuals, owing to nonrivalry of benefits and nonexcludability problems. Collective provision was first thought essential for these public goods.

Indeed, a very clear statement of what we would recognize as a public good problem was provided, more than 30 years before Smith's Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, by his friend David Hume.