All Posts Tagged With: "Public Choice"
Hayek and the Presumption of Goodwill
In a world of heated ideological differences and partisan political conflict, it’s tempting to paint our opponents as stupid and evil. We need to get past that. We need to keep learning.
13Dec2011 | Sandy Ikeda | 13 comments | ContinuedThe Pursuit of Justice: The Law and Economics of Legal Institutions
Public Choice analysis is the application of economic reasoning—principally the idea that human action is primarily self-interested—to questions drawn from politics and government. It was famously described by James Buchanan as “politics without romance.” To date most Public Choice research has focused on the behavior of political actors. Less attention has been paid to the behavior [...]
30Nov2011 | Michael DeBow | 18 comments | ContinuedThe Hesitant Hand: Taming Self-Interest in the History of Economic Ideas
“The focus of this book,” according to its author, “is the interplay of self-interest, market, and the state in economic analysis from the mid-nineteenth century up through the latter stages of the twentieth.” Much of this well-written study, however, is devoted to describing the intellectual origins of the approach to political economy known today as [...]
24Feb2011 | Sandy Ikeda | 0 comments | ContinuedSeasteading: Striking at the Root of Bad Government
Libertarians have done a wonderful job of pointing out the inefficiency and cruelty of government and identifying some of the causes. We know that current policies are bad; we know that such policies are the inevitable outcome of unrestrained democracy; and we even have some ideas about what would work better. The most fundamental problem [...]
24Feb2011 | and Patri Friedman | 11 comments | ContinuedIdeas versus Interests
One of my favorite quotes about the power of ideas comes from Ludwig von Mises in Human Action: “What determines the course of a nation’s economic policies is always the economic ideas held by public opinion. No government whether democratic or dictatorial can free itself from the sway of the generally accepted ideology.” This is [...]
22Dec2010 | Isaac M. Morehouse | 11 comments | ContinuedGovernment’s Diminishing Benefits from Inflation
For millennia governments have resorted to expanding the money stock, either through coinage debasement or fiat money, to finance their expenditures. This expedient, with its resulting price inflation, has occurred most noticeably during wars. And the Zimbabwe hyperinflation of 2007–08, the second worst in world history, peaking at a rate of 79.6 billion percent per [...]
22Oct2010 | Jeffrey Rogers Hummel | 6 comments | ContinuedIdeas versus Interests
Bad incentives can be overcome by good ideas.
11Oct2010 | Isaac M. Morehouse | 4 comments | ContinuedPublic Schools through the Public Choice Lens
Regarding the state of government (“public”) schooling in the United States today, two facts stand out. The first is that the average amount of money spent per pupil has dramatically increased during the past 35 years and is now one of the highest in the world, and the second is that student achievement, by both [...]
22Sep2010 | Michael Bors | 7 comments | ContinuedRegulatory Failure by the Numbers
Between the current financial mess and the debate over carbon dioxide emissions controls, there is a lot of talk about regulation these days. We are told, for example, that the recession would have been prevented if proper regulations had been in place. While it is true that (by definition) the “right” regulations would have prevented [...]
25Aug2010 | and Robert L. Bradley Jr. | 5 comments | ContinuedThe Right Nation: Conservative Power in America
As I read them, our British authors, the sharp and witty Washington-based editors of the weekly London-based Economist, are modern-day if imperfect Alexis de Tocquevilles, updating Democracy in America by some 165 years. Recall the shrewd Tocqueville’s prescience in seeing how America, then but 45 years old and supposedly constrained by the Constitution, could wax [...]
10Jul2010 | William H. Peterson | 0 comments | ContinuedReturn to Greatness: How America Lost Its Sense of Purpose and What It Needs to Do to Recover It
Alan Wolfe is a professor of political science and the director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College. In the pages of his new book, Return to Greatness, we learn about one of the great disappointments and frustrations of his life: “An entire lifetime can pass–my adult lifetime actually–without [...]
10Jul2010 | Richard M. Ebeling | 0 comments | ContinuedGovernment Failure: E.G. West on Education
This illuminating book was designed to commemorate the achievements and to spread the ideas of the late Edwin G. West. Professor West, who lived from 1922 to 2001, did pioneering work in the economics and history of education, and his studies have been critical in refuting the pretensions of government education. Those who wish to [...]
8Jul2010 | Antony Flew | 0 comments | ContinuedMugged by the State
Most Americans believe that if they raise their kids well, attend church, work 9 to 5, and pay their taxes, they can pretty much go about life unhindered by the government. Certainly there are the annoyances and trivialities that occur when visiting the department of motor vehicles or the post office, but grisly tales of [...]
8Jul2010 | Jude Blanchette | 0 comments | ContinuedDemocracy, Deficit, and Debt
Democracy in Deficit is one of those books that can profoundly change the way people think about economics.
8Apr2010 | Steven Horwitz | 8 comments | ContinuedWhy Those Who Value Liberty Should Rejoice: Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize
Elinor Ostrom, the first woman to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, is also one of the most iconoclastic thinkers to win it. (She shared it with Oliver Williamson.) Professor Ostrom’s work focuses on the mechanisms of self-governance that operate in different societies. Her intellectual curiosity led her to study local public economies—in [...]
18Nov2009 | Peter J. Boettke | 6 comments | ContinuedThe Importance of Ostrom
From Real Time Economics (Wall Street Journal): The main lesson is that common property is often managed on the basis of rules and procedures that have evolved over long periods of time. As a result they are more adequate and subtle than outsiders — both politicians and social scientists — have tended to realize. Beyond [...]
13Oct2009 | Sheldon Richman | 2 comments | ContinuedIn Defense of Ideology
There have been many statements recently to the effect that we should not let “ideology” or “philosophy” stand in the way of solving our economic problems. Indeed, the Obama administration (like the previous Bush administration) is keen to persuade us to drop all this prejudice and to go after each problem–banking, stimulus, and so forth–on [...]
19Aug2009 | Mario Rizzo | 0 comments | Continued-
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