This volume is intended to serve as a review of the “next generation” of political economy scholars in what can be called the “Wagnerian” tradition, which traces its roots to Buchanan and De Viti De Marco in the 1930s, who argued that any decision that results from a political entity must be the product of individual decision makers operating within some framework of formal and informal rules. To treat these decisions as if they were the product of one single mind, or even simply the additive result of several decisions, is to fundamentally misunderstand and mischaracterize the dynamics of collective action. Today, Richard Wagner is among the most prominent theorists in analyzing the institutional foundations of the economy and the organization of political decision-making. In this collection of original essays, former students schooled in this tradition offer emerging insights on public choice theory, public finance, and political economy, across a range of topics from voting behavior to entrepreneurship.
Author(s): David Hebert, Diana Thomas
Series: Studies in Public Choice
Publisher: Springer
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 190
City: Cham
Contents
Contributors
Introduction
Emergence and Entanglement in a Theory of Political Economy
1 A Societal Topography: Action Level and Systems Level
2 Entanglement in a Theory of Political Economy
3 Public Law and Public Economy
4 Parasitical Politics and Economic Calculation
5 Working with Political Profit as a Concept
6 From Wicksell to Buchanan and His Unfinished Analytical Agenda
7 A Closing Comment
References
Swimming in a Tuxedo: A Systems Theory Approach to Understanding Politics
1 Introduction
2 Why Parts?
3 Markets and Politics as Systems
4 The Behavior of Parts
5 Conclusion
References
Complex and Entangled Public Policy: Here Be Dragons
1 Introduction
2 The Development of Complexity Economics: A Short History
3 The Cutting Edge of Complexity Economics
3.1 Agent-Based Modeling: Simulating the Entire Economy
3.2 Graph Theory: Interactions on a Network Topology
3.3 Big Data and Machine Learning
4 Here Be Dragons
4.1 The Cybernetic Dragon: Or, How Agile Policy-Making Is Entangled with Agile Self-Organization
4.2 The Monstrous Neoclassical Hybrid
5 Conclusion: What Should Complexity Economists Do?
References
Taxonomy of Entrepreneurship – A Means-Oriented Approach
1 Introduction
2 Ends-Based Taxonomy
3 Entrepreneurship in the Entangled Political Economy
4 Conclusions
References
From Taciturn to Talkative Political Economy
1 Introduction
2 Communicative to Creative
3 Tuism and Talk
4 A Case Study: Democracy in Deficit
5 Conclusion
References
Entanglement and Perverse Spontaneous Orders
1 Introduction
2 Entangled Political Economy and the Logic of Intervention
3 Entanglement and Perverse Spontaneous Orders
4 Ecology of Public Aid Enterprises in the U.S.
5 Implications and Conclusion
References
The Tax Code as an Emergent Phenomenon
1 Tax Policy from the Perspective of Economists vs. Policymakers
2 Evolution of the Federal Tax Code in the United States
3 Tax Reform in the United States
4 Perverse Emergent Orders?
5 Conclusion
References
Political Property Rights and Entangled Political Economy
1 Introduction
2 An Overview of Political Property Rights
3 Constitutions and Political Property Rights
4 The Future of Political Property Rights and Entangled Political Economy
References
The Fiscal Squeeze: Budgets Between Fiscal Illusion, Fiscal Commons, and the Tyranny of Experts
1 Introduction
2 Fiscal Federalism – The Theory
2.1 Fiscal Federalism and Spending on Public Goods Production
2.2 Fiscal Federalism and Revenue for Public Goods Production
3 Definition and History of the Squeeze
3.1 Local to State: The First Part of the Squeeze
3.2 Federal to State
4 Consequences of the Squeeze
4.1 Fiscal Commons
4.2 Fiscal Illusion
4.3 Expert Bias
5 Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
