political science

(i.e. use by any one individual does not compete with or interfere with use by others). Knowledge and information, such as in th ...

allocate property rights in the scarce resource. Hardin’s example, from which the ‘‘commons’’ problem derives its familiar label ...

curing such a failure would just contract around whatever institutional problem keeps markets from generating a Pareto-optimal o ...

the outcomes are already known: e.g. being born in socially disadvantaged circum- stances or born with disabilities, congenital ...

riding complicates any attempt at voluntary cooperation on that Pareto-improving result. The ‘‘conspicuous waste’’ that Veblen t ...

himself tied to the mast. 6 Experimental economists and allied psychologists have made an industry of cataloguing the heuristics ...

information, and persuasion over more directly coercive measures such as prohib- itions, regulations, and taxes (O’Hare 1989 ). ...

future earnings to hire appropriate guardianship services, or that agency losses in contracts for such services are likely to be ...

interventions to overcome failures are most needed they may be least likely to succeed. This is the paradox that plagues eVorts ...

contraction do not, however, take us back to where we started, but to very diVerent conclusions about what government should do, ...

developed countries face diVerent kinds of problems with penetrative capacity, but in both cases they are likely to commit error ...

of market failures that states can correct, but they can be used also for purely extractive purposes. Where government is fundam ...

who would otherwise be hurt by it—as in the familiar case of compensation for houses taken to build highways—this process is unp ...

(Olson 1971 ). That might not be true of voting, but it is a powerful insight into other forms of electoral activity, includingW ...

5.5 Cause Five: The Path Dependence of Political Decision Making The calculation that, given their relative defects, government ...

making it diYcult to focus public attention suYciently to overcome concentrated interests. Systems that delegate a great deal of ...

to public disdain, and public disdain to low salaries. Norms making politicians and ‘‘bureaucrats’’ the bearers of stigma and th ...

social problems, and a legacy of eYcient and entrepreneurial administrative agencies, connected to high-quality educational inst ...

the market is allowed to exert its power of making every participant’s wants a motive for others to satisfy those wants. That in ...

maintain the public ardor that created the pressure for the income–leisure swap in the Wrst place, its impact may be severely de ...