Public choice, social choice, and political economy

How Compatible are Public Choice and Austrian Political Economy?

Public Choice relies heavily on equilibrium analysis in its models of government failure. Austrians are suspicious of equilibrium analysis owing to its reliance on some variant of the perfect-knowledge assumption. To what extent then can Austrians consistently embrace public-choice descriptions of government failure? This paper argues that to maintain methodological consistency Public Choice sh...

Public Opinion , Political Representation , and Democratic Choice

Title of dissertation: PUBLIC OPINION, POLITICAL REPRESENTATION, AND DEMOCRATIC CHOICE Michael J. Zenz, Doctor of Philosophy, 2015 Dissertation directed by: Assistant Professor Eric Pacuit Professor Christopher W. Morris Department of Philosophy In this dissertation I argue that political representatives have duties to be responsive to public opinion in their policy decisions. The existence of ...

Political Choice, Public Policy, and Distributional Outcomes

The Political Economy of Urban Transport-System Choice

This paper analyzes the political economy of transport-system choice, with the goal of gaining an understanding of the forces involved in this important urban public policy decision. Transport systems pose a continuous trade-off between time and money cost, so that a city can choose a fast system with a high money cost per mile or a slower, cheaper system. The paper compares the socially optima...

Public Reason, Social Choice, and Cooperation*

Economic theory and legal theory can both claim to provide plausible accounts of rational decision-making. Yet, despite the growth of "law and economics" as a hugely successful area of interdisciplinary study, therff is very little intellectual exchange between the rational choice theorist who attempts to explain economic behaviour on the one hand, and the more philosophically inclined theorist...