Companion to the Political Economy of Rent Seeking

Companion to the Political Economy of Rent Seeking
Author: R. D. Congleton
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 553
Release: 2015-02-27
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1782544941

The quest for benefit from existing wealth or by seeking privileged benefit through influence over policy is known as rent seeking. Much rent seeking activity involves government and political decisions and is therefore in the domain of political econo

Public Finance and Public Policy

Public Finance and Public Policy
Author: Arye L. Hillman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 657
Release: 2019-01-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1108667732

This new edition restructures and updates the political economy view of the responsibilities and limitations of government. Public-choice and behavioural concepts are prominent. Gender issues are included. Technical concepts are explained from first principles. Economic theory is rigorously applied. Excessive technicality is avoided. The book integrates traditional public finance topics - taxation, public goods, externalities, and income redistribution - with political self-interest, bureaucracy, voting, rent seeking, corruption, and the common-pool problem of public spending. Social justice is viewed as income equality, equality of opportunity, or the right to benefit from one's own effort. Public policies studied include the environment, education, health insurance, welfare payments and entitlements under moral hazard, unemployment insurance, paternalistic impositions, and defence and public safety. This book is ideal for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses that combine economic theory with a real-world perspective on the politics of public finance and public policy. A broad scope makes the book suitable for students in all countries.

The Oxford Handbook of Public Choice

The Oxford Handbook of Public Choice
Author: Roger D. Congleton
Publisher:
Total Pages: 985
Release: 2019
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0190469730

"This two-volume collection provides a comprehensive overview of the past seventy years of public choice research, written by experts in the fields surveyed. The individual chapters are more than simple surveys, but provide readers with both a sense of the progress made and puzzles that remain. Most are written with upper level undergraduate and graduate students in economics and political science in mind, but many are completely accessible to non-expert readers who are interested in Public Choice research. The two-volume set will be of broad interest to social scientists, policy analysts, and historians"--

The Political Economy of Rent-Seeking

The Political Economy of Rent-Seeking
Author: Charles Rowley
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 480
Release: 2013-04-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1475719639

It is now twenty years since the concept of rent-seeking was first devised by Gordon Tullock, though he was not responsible for coining the phrase itself. His initial insight has burgeoned over two decades into a major research program which has had an impact not only on public choice, but also on the related disciplines of economics, political science, and law and economics. The reach of the insight has proved to be universal, with relevance not just for the democracies, but also, and arguably more important, for all forms of autocracy, irrespective of ideological com plexion. It is not surprising, therefore, that this volume is the third edited publication dedicated specifically to scholarship into rent-seeking behavior. The theory of rent-seeking bridges normative and positive analyses of state action. In its normative dimension, rent-seeking scholarship has expanded, enlivened, in some respects turned on its head, the traditional welfare analyses of such features of modern economics as monopoly, externalities, public goods, and trade protection devices. In its positive dimension, rent-seeking contributions have provided an important analy tical perspective from which to understand and to predict the behavior of politicians, interest groups and bureaucrats, the media and the academy within the political market place. This bridge between normative and positive elements of analysis is invaluable in facilitating an understanding of and evaluating the costs of state activity within a consistent paradigm.

Political Capitalism

Political Capitalism
Author: Randall G. Holcombe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2018-07-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1108596126

Problems associated with cronyism, corporatism, and policies that favor the elite over the masses have received increasing attention in recent years. Political Capitalism explains that what people often view as the result of corruption and unethical behavior are symptoms of a distinct system of political economy. The symptoms of political capitalism are often viewed as the result of government intervention in a market economy, or as attributes of a capitalist economy itself. Randall G. Holcombe combines well-established theories in economics and the social sciences to show that political capitalism is not a mixed economy, or government intervention in a market economy, or some intermediate step between capitalism and socialism. After developing the economic theory of political capitalism, Holcombe goes on to explain how changes in political ideology have facilitated the growth of political capitalism, and what can be done to redirect public policy back toward the public interest.

Solving Social Dilemmas

Solving Social Dilemmas
Author: Roger D. Congleton
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 481
Release: 2022
Genre: Civil society
ISBN: 0197642780

"Solving Social Dilemmas demonstrates that social, political, and economic progress occur when ethical dispositions evolve in a manner that solves or ameliorate social dilemmas. That same process can account for the emergence of prosperous societies in the West during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was substantially a consequence of increased moral support for commerce and careers in commerce that had emerged during the previous two centuries. To support these claims, two analytical histories are developed. The first uses elementary game theory to illustrate how critical social dilemmas can be solved by internalized ethical ideas about "proper" or "moral" conduct. That analytical history implies that in the absence of solutions to critical social dilemmas-of which there are many thousands-social, political, and economic development tends to be curtailed. The second analytical history surveys three centuries of ethical assessments concerning the proper role of commerce in a good life and good society. The authors reviewed all used economic illustrations to illustrate moral principles or how they may be applied. Because the illustrating examples are ones that their readers would have found "obvious," they shed light on the ethical dispositions in the communities to whom those works were addressed. Together, they reveal that concerns about the effects of market son ethical dispositions were diminishing during the centuries before the great acceleration of commerce in the nineteenth century. In fact, many of the authors reviewed argued that there was a complete harmony between ethical dispositions and commerce. Together the two narratives imply that shifts in norms directly and indirectly account for the relative prosperity of the West compared to other parts of the World during the twentieth century. It turns out that flourishing commercial societies have moral foundations"--

The Elgar Companion to Development Studies

The Elgar Companion to Development Studies
Author: David Clark
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 757
Release: 2006
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1847202861

If handbooks can be inspiring, this is it! Like a true companion, it takes in its stride conversations both big and small. Its entries do not just present an international and multidisciplinary mix, but true to life they work on several different scales. And, importantly, the book makes its authority evident. For it is like an extended website, but with all the added advantages of an encyclopaedia that actually tells you about the authors and the sources on which they have drawn. The resulting compilation is highly intelligent, thoughtful and above all usable. Dame Marilyn Strathern, University of Cambridge, UK The Elgar Companion to Development Studies is a major production in the development studies field, authored by a star-studded cast of contributors. With 136 entries covering a vast range of topics, it should quickly establish itself as a leading work of reference. We should all feel indebted to David Clark, who has successfully brought this substantial publishing project to completion. John Toye, University of Oxford, UK This is a most comprehensive handbook on development studies. It brings together a wide, varied array of carefully crafted summaries of 136 key topics in development by an international cast of well-respected academics and other experts in respective areas of study. The handbook is heavily interdisciplinary, organically combining economic, political, historical, social, cultural, institutional, ethical, and human aspects of development. While the wide range of entries might appear as a simple glossary listing or an encyclopedic collection, each of the 136 entries offers more depth and discussion than the average handbook. . . . Viewed in this light, this companion is highly likely to become known as a leading reference work on the topic. Highly recommended. Ismael Hossein-Zadeh, Choice The Elgar Companion to Development Studies is an innovative and unique reference book that includes original contributions covering development economics as well as development studies broadly defined. This major new Companion brings together an international panel of experts from varying backgrounds who discuss theoretical, ethical and practical issues relating to economic, social, cultural, institutional, political and human aspects of development in poor countries. It also includes a selection of intellectual biographies of leading development thinkers. While the Companion is organised along the lines of an encyclopaedia, each of its 136 entries provide more depth and discussion than the average reference book. Its entries are also extremely diverse: they draw on different social science disciplines, incorporate various mixes of theoretical and applied work, embrace a variety of methodologies and represent different views of the world. The Elgar Companion to Development Studies will therefore appeal to students, scholars, researchers, policymakers and practitioners in the filed of development as well as the interested layman.

China's Political Economy In The Xi Jinping Epoch: Domestic And Global Dimensions

China's Political Economy In The Xi Jinping Epoch: Domestic And Global Dimensions
Author: Lowell Dittmer
Publisher: World Scientific
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2021-03-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9811226598

This book takes a fresh look at Chinese political economy at a key inflection point. Facing a more competitive international environment, Chinese reform has shifted from its earlier focus on economic liberalization and political decentralization to a more tightly organized, centralized form of state socialism. The Party-state's vigorous fiscal reaction to the Global Financial Crisis (2008-2009) left the country with a much improved infrastructure and greater sense of national self-assurance. The more monocratic central leadership has redoubled efforts to fight poverty and pollution, push technological innovation, and at the same time rigorously enforce ideological consensus, political loyalty and anticorruption.This has been occurring in an international context of slowing trade and nationalist pushback against 'globalization', prominently including bilateral Chinese-American polarization. While China has been among the staunchest advocates and beneficiaries of globalization, incipient trade war 'decoupling' has spurred movement toward economic and technological self-reliance. Turning inward however vies with a rival impulse toward more vigorous engagement in the world. This is most consequentially represented by the Belt and Road Initiative, driving massive infrastructure construction through Central Asia and the South and Southeast Asian maritime periphery. Despite slowing growth and a large debt overhang, swift recovery from the Covid-19 epidemic leaves China in a relatively strong economic position.

Power, Property Rights, and Economic Development

Power, Property Rights, and Economic Development
Author: Mohammad Dulal Miah
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2018-11-19
Genre: Law
ISBN: 9811327637

This book presents a critical reassessment of theories of property rights, in response to conflicts and competition between different groups, and the state. It does so by taking an institutional political perspective to analyse the structures of property rights, with a focus on a series of case studies from Bangladesh. In doing so, the book highlights the importance of property rights for economic growth, why developing countries often fail to design property rights conducive for economic development, and the strategies required for designing an efficient structure of rights. Since property rights falls within the domain of Law and Economics, the book ventures to explain legal issues from an economic perspective, resulting in empirical analysis that comprises both legal and non-legal cases.