The Rise and Fall of Public Choice

Public Choice research and the growth of government show a marked paradox: While the importance of Public Choice has declined, the importance of the public sector has grown. This paper empirically presents the development of Public Choice over time using several different measurement approaches. Scholarly attention to Public Choice increased strongly from the seventies to the beginning of the 21st century and then markedly decreased up to 2020.Several possible reasons for the decline are discussed, such as a sense of exhaustion with a particular approach or a new zeitgeist. Neglecting the insights of Public Choice can have social costs as the public sector in most countries has greatly expanded and is subject to incentives and constraints, as are other individuals. Several possibilities to overcome the paradoxical situation of an area in need of analysis and the fall of a respective analytical approach, Public Choice, are proposed