This Element examines clientelism and its impact on democratic institutions and markets, emphasizing that, alongside electoral competition, politics hosts two additional arenas: one where political actors seek campaign resources and active supporters, and another where socioeconomic actors...

"The Elgar Encyclopedia of Public Choice offers a comprehensive and authoritative guide to the interdisciplinary field that bridges economics, political science, and philosophy. With contributions from leading scholars around the globe, this volume explores how incentives, institutions, and...

This monograph surveys the results of government intervention in the market for retirement income provision throughout the world. The authors begin by looking at high-income democracies in which governments have, to a large degree, taken over the function of providing pensions.They find that...

This selection of E.G. West’s papers contains a wealth of economic and philosophical ananlysis which can guide policymakers in the field of Education. They also show how state monopoly provision of education has led to a particular model of schooling which does not work for many of those who...

In many cases, the expected efficiency advantages of public-private partnership (PPP) projects as a specific form of infrastructure provision did not materialize ex post. From a Public Choice perspective, one simple explanation for many of the problems surrounding the governance of PPPs is that...

Some societies appear to be better equipped than others to implement efficiency enhancing policy reforms and to deliver positive results out of their implementation. Our model presents an under-examined element of policy reform and institutional quality, showing how the characteristics of the...

Health care is beset with an array of market failures (e.g., informational asymmetries, externalities, monopolization, and public goods). In theory, government can intervene to fix these market failures, allowing scarce resources to be devoted to their highest use at the lowest possible cost...

Calls for reforming the civil rights enforcement regime often focus on individual government officers. Recent years have brought demands to abolish qualified immunity—a defense that protects individual officers from liability so long as they did not violate clearly established law—and to end...

The paper examines one of the considerations that determines the extent to which policymakers pursue the objectives demanded by constituents. The nature and extent of their ignorance serve to determine the incentives confronted by policymakers to pursue their constituents' demands. The paper...

"This Introduction summarizes the contents and explains the methodology of the book and of its main policy conclusions on how constitutional democracies should respond to the increasing governance failures inside and beyond states. All UN member states have employed constitutional law for...

"In The Icarus Curse, Van Overtveldt argues that decades of Keynesian-inspired policies have led to policy exhaustion, with politicians fueling unrealistic expectations and accumulating debt. Despite central bankers' efforts to mitigate crises, the current policy model is unsustainable, leaving...

This paper documents that the spread of communism in China was partly caused by state failures in the early 20th century. It finds that famines became more frequent after China fell into warlord fragmentation, especially for prefectures with less rugged borders and those facing stronger military...

This paper argues that government policies such as lockdowns and command and control regulation of businesses have not efficiently addressed the nature of the Covid-19 externality because these interventions fail to take account of insights from standard price theory about the reciprocal nature...

This paper takes as a given the proposition that, in many developing countries, governmental policies have been highly distortive and harmful to economic growth. These policies have included omissions, such as neglect of infrastructure, and commission such as highly restrictive trade regimes and...

Structural transformation - the movement of workers from low-productivity to high-productivity activities - is an essential ingredient of inclusive growth. This paper reviews the evidence on why the pace of structural transformation has differed widely across countries in Asia, with a specific...

This paper derives and simulates a compartmental model of the Coronavirus outbreak in which individuals have self-interested reactions to the threat of infection, proportional to the heterogeneous risk of complications that they face. As long as high-risk individuals perceive infection as...

This paper derives and simulates a compartmental model of the Coronavirus outbreak in which individuals have self-interested reactions to the threat of infection, proportional to the heterogeneous risk of complications that they face. As long as high-risk individuals perceive infection as...

The purpose of the original Farm Bill in 1933 was to protect small farmers from price fluctuations by limiting supply. Recent research illustrates how the USDA has grown far beyond its original intent and provides further evidence that Farm Bill subsidies are mostly provided to the largest, not...

Der Staat steht angesichts der Transformation von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft durch die Digitalisierung, die Globalisierung und den Klimawandel vor neuen und großen Herausforderungen. Diesen wird er am besten gerecht, wenn er Probleme präventiv behandelt und nicht ex post „heilt“. Um die...

"Abby Innes argues that the Soviet revolution and British neoliberalism failed for many of the same theoretical and practical reasons. She shows how Britain championed radical economic liberalisation only to weaken and ultimately break its own governing institutions."

"This book aims to provoke a change in the approach to Nigeria's challenges, highlighting the untapped potential in the individuals and the nation. The acquired knowledge should be willingly shared for the progress of Nigeria and for the benefit of all. The questions in this book are designed to...

A relatively mild form of government failure - for example, bureaucrats can count but do not differentiate quality - can significantly affect the efficacy of industrial policy. We investigate this idea in the context of China's largest pro-innovation industrial policy using a structural model....

In many cases, the expected efficiency advantages of public-private partnership (PPP) projects as a specific form of infrastructure provision did not materialize ex post. From a Public Choice perspective, one simple explanation for many of the problems surrounding the governance of PPPs is that...

We develop a critique of government interventionism based on the Misesian calculation argument against socialism. If private property rights and relative prices based on supply and demand are necessary for successful economic coordination, then conventional market failure theories cannot be...

The equity premium-risk-free rate level and predictability puzzles in standard power utility consumption-based asset pricing models disappear once we remove the government-imposed component from the consumption expenditure series. I calibrate this component based on the growth rates of two...

We develop a critique of government interventionism based on the Misesian calculation argument against socialism. If private property rights and relative prices based on supply and demand are necessary for successful economic coordination, then conventional market failure theories cannot be...