Amazon Customer Review #1
A Customer Review has appeared on the Amazon page for Madmen.
Amazon Customer Review, November 10, 2012: If you’re a student of public choice economics, you must despair at all the obstacles to economic liberalization that public choice theory identifies. Political myopia, special interests, transitional gains traps….
But Leighton and Lopez offer some hope for how the stasis of public choice can be overcome. They offer up a simple model to analyze several instances (e.g., airline deregulation) in which, against all apparent odds, the special interests were beaten. Drawing on notions from both Keynes and Hayek, who argued for the primacy of intellectuals and “academic scribblers” as agents of social change, the authors add the notion of a “madman” to the mix. A madman is a policy entrepreneur who identifies a crack in the political system that he can exploit to achieve political change. They show how the combination of intellectual ideas, scribblers, and madmen at the right time and place can beat public choice barriers to reform.
Read the full Amazon page for Madmen.