Robert D. Tollison - Böcker

The rapidly changing and evolving art market might appear to be chaotic to the casual observer, with new highs, potential lows, and tastes and fashions changing season to season. Economists, however, view the actions of buyers and sellers as constituting an identifiable market. They have, for some decades, studied such issues as artistic productivity and "death effects" on prices, investment returns, and on the basis of the behavior and estimated prices in auction markets. The Economics of American Art analyzes the most pervasive economic issues facing the art world, applied to the whole spectrum of American art. The book begins by looking at how a market for American art developed, how the politics of the post-war era shaped, at least in large part, the direction of American art, and how this legacy continues into contemporary art today. The book then tackles several salient, integral questions animating the American art world: Are age and "type" of artist (i.e. traditional or "innovative") related and, if so, how might they be related to productivity? Is investment in American art a remunerative endeavor compared to other investment possibilities? Do economic insights provide understanding of fakes, fraud and theft of art, particularly American art, and is it possible to prevent art crime? Is there is a boom (or a bust) in the market for contemporary American art as might be found in other markets? The ongoing evolution of American art is attended by a massive number of influences, and the economic concepts employed in this volume will complement other critical and important cultural studies of art. Both practical and accessible, The Economics of American Art will be essential for collectors, auction houses, American art experts of all kinds, museums, gallery owners and, not least, by economists with continuing scholarly interests in these matters.

The Church dominated society in the Middle Ages and functioned as a quasi-government, providing public and private goods. This book is the first to examine specific institutions in the Church in the Middle Ages in economic terms. Other books have argued generally that the Church either had a positive or negative effect on economic development. The authors of this book look more closely at the actual Church institutions and practices and describe how each functioned as a part of the larger economy of the time. They focus especially on marriage, usury, heresy, the crusades, and the monasteries. It is not their purpose to reject or impugn religious motives that may be advanced by theologians and historians. Their goal is to bring a fresh perspective to the role of institutions of the medieval Church in economic development.

In Policy Challenges and Political Responses, leading public choice scholars confront the most significant problems facing democratic societies at the dawn of the 21st century. Ranging widely across the policy spectrum, this authoritative volume demonstrates the vibrancy and continuing relevance of the public choice research program by applying its ideas and methods to constitution-making in the European Union, terrorism, the growth of government, political campaign finance, vote-counting technologies, participatory democracy, corporate governance, school choice, and tort reform. Essays assessing the present state of the social contract and the enduring tensions between capitalism, socialism, and democracy broaden the book’s perspective.The distinguished list of contributors includes James Buchanan, Charles Rowley, Dennis Mueller, Todd Sandler, Randall Holcombe, Michael Munger, Thomas Stratmann, Harold Mulherin, Lawrence Kenny, and Paul Rubin. Edited by two of the editors of the journal Public Choice and as fresh as today’s headlines, this volume positions the public choice literature in the context of current events and points its research agenda in new directions. It is a unique and indispensable collection of value to economists, political scientists, political philosophers, and public policymakers.

The Theory of Public Choice is a landmark volume that brings together key essays and articles charting the rapid evolution of public choice theory during its most formative decade. Edited by James M. Buchanan and Robert D. Tollison—leading figures in the “Virginian School” of political economy—this collection synthesizes the major advances of public choice as it applies the tools of economic analysis to the workings of democratic and political institutions. The volume begins with overviews of the field’s development, highlighting public choice’s foundational challenge to “romantic” notions of government and its turn toward a more realistic, empirical understanding of collective decision-making. Renowned contributors—including Buchanan, Dennis Mueller, Gordon Tullock, and many others—explore subjects from voting theory and constitutional economics to rent-seeking, bureaucracy, and the political economy of welfare and regulation. Organized into topical sections covering theoretical advances, applications, empirical studies, and philosophical issues, The Theory of Public Choice illuminates how economics, political science, and policy analysis intersect. Whether addressing topics like political resource allocation, the logic of majority rule, or the emergence of tax and spending limitations, these essays demonstrate how public choice theory has reshaped the way scholars, policymakers, and citizens think about government. Accessible yet rigorous, this collection is essential for anyone seeking insight into the mechanisms of collective action, constitutional design, and the ongoing challenge of ensuring accountability and efficiency in public institutions. It stands as a vital resource for students and scholars in economics, political science, public policy, and related fields.

Predicting Politics: Essays in Empirical Public Choice explores politics in an empirical spirit. The topics covered are novel and important, including the impact of campaign finance on the size of government, the economics of gerrymandering, constitutional change, and budgetary politics. The approach is to formulate and to test interesting hypotheses about political behavior. The essential idea is to illustrate the power of public choice theory in explaining actual politics. The volume brings together the work of Crain and Tollison and other scholars who have worked in this public choice tradition, and shows the power of empirical approaches in explaining the origin and inner working of political institutions and processes.

Cigarettes are under political attack at all_levels of government in the United States. From Washington, D. C. to state capitals to local govern­ ments, proposals abound to increase the cigarette excise tax, to impose smoking bans, to prevent cigarette advertising, to restrict the sale of cigarettes through vending machines, to cut off the export of cigarettes, to earmark the cigarette excise tax for health programs, to divest the stock of cigarette companies, and so on. And all of these are purportedly being advocated in the name of health. Undergirding and abetting the health argument is an economic argument that claims to place a value of up to $100 billion per year on the alleged health costs of smoking to the American economy, which is more than $3 per pack of cigarettes smoked. As our title suggests, our interest lies in the economics of smoking and not in the health issues surrounding smoking. We are professional economists and not medical scientists. We will focus on what, if any, economic consequences arise for nonsmokers when smokers smoke. For purposes of our discussion, we simply accept the premise that smoking damages health and proceed with our analysis. Since we have not studied the issue ourselves, we have no way of knowing whether such a premise is true. But it really does not matter for getting the economics of smoking right. The important point resides in who pays for whatever to smoking.

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.

In Policy Challenges and Political Responses, leading public choice scholars confront the most significant problems facing democratic societies at the dawn of the 21st century. Ranging widely across the policy spectrum, this authoritative volume demonstrates the vibrancy and continuing relevance of the public choice research program by applying its ideas and methods to constitution-making in the European Union, terrorism, the growth of government, political campaign finance, vote-counting technologies, participatory democracy, corporate governance, school choice, and tort reform. Essays assessing the present state of the social contract and the enduring tensions between capitalism, socialism, and democracy broaden the book’s perspective.The distinguished list of contributors includes James Buchanan, Charles Rowley, Dennis Mueller, Todd Sandler, Randall Holcombe, Michael Munger, Thomas Stratmann, Harold Mulherin, Lawrence Kenny, and Paul Rubin. Edited by two of the editors of the journal Public Choice and as fresh as today’s headlines, this volume positions the public choice literature in the context of current events and points its research agenda in new directions. It is a unique and indispensable collection of value to economists, political scientists, political philosophers, and public policymakers.

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.

This collection brings together the classic papers on the economics of rent seeking. These papers date from Gordon Tullock's original 1967 paper which first put forth the idea that the pursuit of transfers was socially costly. Other classic papers by Anne Krueger and Richard Posner are included, as well as a series of more recent papers which trace the evolution of the literature on this important innovation in economic theory.

The Economics of Budget Deficits provides a comprehensive overview of the scholarly literature exploring the causes and consequences of deficit spending and the public debt. Incorporating classical, Keynesian and public choice analyses of debt-financed public expenditures, the two volumes contain major theoretical and empirical contributions to the debate. They cover such critical fiscal policy issues as the history and measurement of budget deficits, the question of who bears the burden of the public debt, the use of deficits to solve problems of dynamic policy inconsistency and the relative effectiveness of fiscal rules and constitutional constraints as mechanisms for achieving budget balance. The editors provide an authoritative introduction to the two volumes and separate overviews of each of the seven parts. The Economics of Budget Deficits is an indispensable reference for all scholars and students interested in fiscal policy and for all policymakers.

This book contains a range of essays on topics in the emerging field of "constitutional political economy". This field of enquiry is strongly associated with the name of James M. Buchanan whose research program has been the point of departure for this field. The essays are a selection of those written by colleagues and researchers in the field to honor Buchanan on the occasion of his 80th birthday. They cover a wide range of topics but fall primarily into two sets: one set dealing with methodological aspects of the c.p.e. approach; the other dealing with specific applications in a variety of policy areas, ranging from "economic transformation" to monetary policy regimes to health care. One particular issue in the methodological area relates to the model of motivation used - and more especially, the role of "morality" in economic and political behavior. The five essays on this topic make up one of the sections of the book, and justify reference to the issue in the volume's title.

This Festschrift was "presented" in electronic form to Buchanan on the occasion of his eightieth birthday on October 3, 1999, after dinner in Fairfax, Virginia. As one might have expected, the response to our call for papers was vo­ luminous. In looking over the many contributions, we felt that a "published" Festschrift was also possible and fitting for the eightieth birthday of so prodi­ gious and influential a scholar as Professor Buchanan. To that end we have assembled the following volume. In selecting the papers to be included here we have basically tried to choose those papers which in some way bear on Buchanan's contributions. Perfectly good papers about issues not related to Buchanan's research agenda or not referring directly to Buchanan's work were not included. Space constraints did not allow universal coverage, so choices had to be made. It should be stated clearly that these were our choices based on the criterion that the contribution be relevant to Buchanan's work. Buchanan had nothing whatsoever to do with the selection of papers for this volume. Once choices had been made, we arranged the papers by subject matter ranging from various aspects of Buchanan's work in economics, political science, philosophy, and related areas, to some more personal recollections of Jim as a professor, friend, and colleague. Including the latter material was also our decision, and this probably represents a choice with which Jim would not have agreed. We think, however, that the reader will find these pieces interesting and informative.

Cigarettes are under political attack at all_levels of government in the United States. From Washington, D. C. to state capitals to local govern­ ments, proposals abound to increase the cigarette excise tax, to impose smoking bans, to prevent cigarette advertising, to restrict the sale of cigarettes through vending machines, to cut off the export of cigarettes, to earmark the cigarette excise tax for health programs, to divest the stock of cigarette companies, and so on. And all of these are purportedly being advocated in the name of health. Undergirding and abetting the health argument is an economic argument that claims to place a value of up to $100 billion per year on the alleged health costs of smoking to the American economy, which is more than $3 per pack of cigarettes smoked. As our title suggests, our interest lies in the economics of smoking and not in the health issues surrounding smoking. We are professional economists and not medical scientists. We will focus on what, if any, economic consequences arise for nonsmokers when smokers smoke. For purposes of our discussion, we simply accept the premise that smoking damages health and proceed with our analysis. Since we have not studied the issue ourselves, we have no way of knowing whether such a premise is true. But it really does not matter for getting the economics of smoking right. The important point resides in who pays for whatever to smoking.