Abstract: Public economics, with the public goods theory as its core, is one of broad categories of economics developing on the basis of public finance. As a broad category of economics, it should have a higher, more inclusive content hierarchy and a relatively independent content system than the public finance. However, the main content and the research object of public economics are still very much the same as that of public finance, and thus the public economics has not yet developed into a satisfactory advanced one. And its forming foundation, as one of the major reasons, has a great effect on its development. As public finance defines the financial revenue and expenditure activity as the complete government economic moves, it may limit the understanding of public economic perspectives and research filed. As a result, by using the theory of Marxist social reproduction, this paper aims at giving a new understanding of meaning, content and characteristics of public economy from a perspective of the public goods reproduction of public economics, and thus provides a “theoretical entrance” for promoting the content level of public economics and further improving its scientific system.

Key words: public economy, public economics, public goods, social reproduction