I have discussed in some detail airline deregulation as a case study of political change within the economic framework laid out in Madmen. Interstate trucking, long-distance telecommunications, railroads, banking, stock brokerage, oil and gas, are additional cases where deregulation occurred.  Future research into these cases may suggest ways in which political entrepreneurs were able to “arbitrage between academic ideas and political inefficiencies.”  But political change– or at least the potential– is in the here and the…
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Policy ideas do not always bear fruit in the real world. What was different with 1970s transportation deregulation? In a previous post I noted that political entrepreneurs find ways to use ideas to break down resistance to change, to overcome “structure-induced stability”. Ed and Wayne write in Madmen  that, “political change happens when entrepreneurs notice and exploit those loose spots in the structure of ideas, institutions, and incentives” (134). As noted by Rodrik , political entrepreneurs will…
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In my previous posts ( here and here ) I have attempted to highlight some of the important research with respect to the economic theory of politics and how well it explains the deregulation of the 1970s. In one sense, the debate is whether deregulation can best be explained by resorting to government officials acting in the public interest, or whether there was a change in the relative power of interest groups. I have suggested that the…
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The theory of economic regulation developed by Stigler and expanded by others is sometimes referred to as the Chicago theory of politics. Politicians broker resources, typically transferring them from large, unorganized groups whose individual members have a small stake in the outcome, to well-organized groups whose individual members have a large stake in a political outcome. Voter ignorance and apathy help this process along. There is a tendency for government regulatory bodies to be captured by the interest groups they…
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In my earlier post , I discussed the conditions that led to New York City enacting in 1937 the first policy to establish taxi cab medallions.  In short, the public’s discontent with high taxi fares, the cabbies’ dissatisfaction with their compensation, the relatively few but large fleet owners, and a general tendency to support government intervention in the wake of the stock market crash and depressed economy created an environment ripe for a new idea to change…
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As Ed Lopez suggested in this post  back in December 2012, the political battles surrounding the emergence of Uber and other ride-share services have proven to be a goldmine for those of us studying and teaching political economy, with the taxi cab medallion at the center of this story of political change.  Both the introduction of the taxi cab medallion and the more recent political struggle in reaction to the entry of ride-share service firms provide for…
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Here is James M. Buchanan (1919-2013) writing in “The Moral Dimension of Debt Financing,” Economic Inquiry, January 1985. Economists have almost totally neglected moral or ethical elements of the behavior that has generated the observed modern regime of continuing and accelerating government budget deficits. To the extent that moral principles affect choice constraints, such neglect is inexcusable. It is incumbent on us, as economic analysts, to understand how morals impinge upon choice, and especially how…
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Suppose a government proposes to spend an additional dollar of spending. Today’s conventional economics says there are three means of financing that proposal: 1) raise current taxes; 2) raise future taxes by issuing current debt; or 3) print money. Ah, the simplicity of the modern state. According to economic historian Alvin Hansen, the 16th Century French philosopher Jean Bodin approved only six sources of state revenue: the public domain, conquest, gifts (which are “rare”), annual…
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Armchair theory can sometimes look naive from the perspective of institutional detail. Case in point, my recent post on high-frequency trading in which I speculate how best to allocate the privilege that HFTs enjoy of proximity to exchange servers and access to dark pools. In other words, what do the HFTs pay for their advantage? And who is receiving these payments? Clearly there are capital investments (a form of private sector rent seeking). But I wonder if there are forms of licensing…
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Robert Levy, Chairman of the Cato Institute, responds to Burton Makiel and Aurthur Levitt’s Wall Street Journal op-ed on the most recent firestorm over high-frequency trading (HFT). Highlighting its downsides, critics have called for bans and regulations to stem or eliminate the practice. These critics allege the practice lends unfair advantage to large and inside traders relative to small and retail traders, worsens market volatility such as flash crashes, and amounts to “front-running”. Levy’s approach is to…
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