This book contains essays in honor of Charles B. Blankart on the occasion of his 65th birthday. The contributors include prominent scholars from the discipline of public finance and public choice. The essays include such topics as taxation, public choice, and regulation, and thus give testimony of Blankart's very broad ranging interests in economics.

The Encyclopedia provides a detailed and comprehensive account of the subject known as public choice. However, the title would not convey suf- ciently the breadth of the Encyclopedia’s contents which can be summarized better as the fruitful interchange of economics, political science and moral philosophy on the basis of an image of man as a purposive and responsible actor who pursues his own objectives as efficiently as possible. This fruitful interchange between the fields outlined above existed during the late eighteenth century during the brief period of the Scottish Enlightenment when such great scholars as David Hume, Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith contributed to all these fields, and more. However, as intell- tual specialization gradually replaced broad-based scholarship from the m- nineteenth century onwards, it became increasingly rare to find a scholar making major contributions to more than one. Once Alfred Marshall defined economics in neoclassical terms, as a n- row positive discipline, the link between economics, political science and moral philosophy was all but severed and economists redefined their role into that of ‘the humble dentist’ providing technical economic information as inputs to improve the performance of impartial, benevolent and omniscient governments in their attempts to promote the public interest. This indeed was the dominant view within an economics profession that had become besotted by the economics of John Maynard Keynes and Paul Samuelson immediately following the end of the Second World War.

This book represents a considerable revision and expansion of Public Choice II (1989). Six new chapters have been added, and several chapters from the previous edition have been extensively revised. The discussion of empirical work in public choice has been greatly expanded. As in the previous editions, all of the major topics of public choice are covered. These include: why the state exists, voting rules, federalism, the theory of clubs, two-party and multiparty electoral systems, rent seeking, bureaucracy, interest groups, dictatorship, the size of government, voter participation, and political business cycles. Normative issues in public choice are also examined including a normative analysis of the simple majority rule, Bergson–Samuelson social welfare functions, the Arrow and Sen impossibility theorems, Rawls's social contract theory and the constitutional political economy of Buchanan and Tullock.

The Next 25 Years of Public Choice brings together the perspectives of many of the world's leading scholars of public choice on the present state of knowledge and the likely future course of scholarship on public choice and constitutional economy. This book presents material in a manner accessible to a wide educated readership and will be influential in guiding future research in this important field. It is directed at professional scholars of public choice, economics and political science, government officials, graduate students and anyone seriously interested in public policy. A distinguished group of internationally well-known scholars offer their own often far-reaching views on strengths and weaknesses in the current literature and pinpoint important avenues of research amenable to future research.

Public choice is the study of behavior at the intersection of economics and political science. Since the pioneering work of Duncan Black in the 1940s, public choice has developed a rich literature, drawing from such related perspectives as history, philosophy, law, and sociology, to analyze political decision making (by citizen-voters, elected officials, bureaucratic administrators, lobbyists, and other "rational" actors) in social and economic context, with an emphasis on identifying differences between individual goals and collective outcomes. Constitutional political economy provides important insights into the relationship between effective constitutions and the behavior of ordinary political markets. In Readings in Public Choice and Constitutional Political Economy, Charles Rowley and Friedrich Schneider have assembled an international array of leading authors to present a comprehensive and accessible overview of the field and its applications. Covering a wide array of topics, including regulation and antitrust, taxation, trade liberalization, political corruption, interest group behavior, dictatorship, and environmental issues, and featuring biographies of the founding fathers of the field, this volume will be essential reading for scholars and students, policymakers, economists, sociologists, and non-specialist readers interested in the dynamics of political economy.

This Brief proposes a new theory of public economics which deemphasizes reliance on the free market and affirms the importance of public goods and services within the context of the democratic process and constitutional governance. Public non-market production makes up from a quarter to more than half of all economic activity in advanced democratic nation-states. Yet by imposing market precepts on the public domain, as mainstream economics, political science, and public administration do, public governing capacity is weakened and the democratic system suffers. Agencies originally created to meet public needs are being warped into entities whose purpose is to generate revenue and, in some cases, deliver private profits at public expense. Drawing on classic public finance literature, this book illustrates the differences between public economy and the market model and why those differences matter. Building on this, the Brief sketches the elements of a new theory of the public non-market and illuminates its connections to the delegation of power and collective provision of resources from the polity. This book will be useful to scholars of public economics, political science, and public administration as well as policy makers and those working in the public sector.

What is Public Choice "the use of economic tools to deal with traditional problems of political science" is what is meant by the term "public choice," additionally known as "public choice theory." An examination of political behavior is included in its scope of coverage. Within the realm of political science, the subfield of positive political theory is responsible for the investigation of self-interested agents and the interactions between them. These interactions can be represented in a variety of ways, including the utilization of game theory, decision theory, or standard limited utility maximization. Additionally, it serves as the intellectual basis for the work that is being done in the field of political economy today. How you will benefit (I) Insights, and validations about the following topics: Chapter 1: Public choice Chapter 2: Logrolling Chapter 3: Rational choice theory Chapter 4: Political economy Chapter 5: James M. Buchanan Chapter 6: The Calculus of Consent Chapter 7: Gordon Tullock Chapter 8: Government failure Chapter 9: Philosophy and economics Chapter 10: Economic methodology Chapter 11: Social Choice and Individual Values Chapter 12: Virginia school of political economy Chapter 13: Robert Tollison Chapter 14: The Myth of the Rational Voter Chapter 15: Public economics Chapter 16: Rational irrationality Chapter 17: Vincent Ostrom Chapter 18: Constitutional economics Chapter 19: Altruism theory of voting Chapter 20: Benefit principle Chapter 21: Efficient Voter Rule (II) Answering the public top questions about public choice. (III) Real world examples for the usage of public choice in many fields. Who this book is for Professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and those who want to go beyond basic knowledge or information for any kind of Public Choice.

The study of public economics has undergone dramatic changes in the past two decades. Major developments in economic theory have revolutionized the subject and have changed the way we view the role of government. The constraints of information and institutions have called into question the ability of the government to carry out some of its traditional tasks, but have also led to new instruments and approaches for dealing with the problem of economic policy such as the design of the redistribution and tax system. Understanding the importance of the economic, behavioral and institutional constraints facing government is critical for evaluating policy options. This is ultimately an empirical issue. This book of a symposium on empiricial public finance indicates the richness and diversity of empirical approaches that have been used to shed light on the problems of applied public finance and its application.

Growing populations and economies have increased the public's awareness that the world's environmental resources are finite. The issues of global warming and the depletion of the ozone layer have given universal significance to what were once local and regional pollution problems. What is evident from Public Economics and the Environment in an Imperfect World is that Coasian negotiations fail to internalize the costs of environmental degradation, often calling for public intervention through the market mechanism. In its consideration of such issues the book includes contributions on assessment problems, institutional aspects, the need for coordination and efficiency, and distribution issues.

Public Finance and Public Choice provides a comprehensive analysis of the economics of the public sector, taking a diagrammatic approach to the subject. Particular emphasis is given to the public choice and behavioural economics schools of thought.