Political Entrepreneurs

The Economic Engine of Political Change

Recommended Reading on Financial Regulation

January 8th, 2013 by Wayne Leighton

The Mercatus Center at George Mason University has been doing a fine job of chronicling the details of financial services regulation following the 2008 crisis. See, in particular, the research of the seventeen members of its Financial Markets Working Group.

Today Mercatus announced that two of its scholars, Hester Peirce and James Broughel, have edited a new book on Dodd-Frank, “the largest and most complex piece of financial services legislation in American history.” Check out Dodd Frank: What It Does and Why It’s Flawed (available on Amazon here; I immediately ordered a copy).

The Mercatus scholars writing on financial services consistently outline the costs and benefits of proposed and actual regulations, never forgetting Bastiat’s lesson that the difference between a good economist and a bad one is that the bad economist confines himself to the visible effects of a policy while the good economist considers both the effects that can be seen and those that must be foreseen.

They also understand political economy. See, for example, this paper by Adam Smith, Richard E. Wagner and Bruce Yandle, “A Theory of Entangled Political Economy, with Application to TARP and NRA.” The authors argue that crisis is a systemic feature of a political economy in which markets and polities are not meaningfully separate but are, instead, deeply entangled. The result is that reform is hard to achieve and likely requires constitutional-level realignment.

Ed and I will be writing more about the political economy of reform, especially as it pertains to financial services.

(full disclosure: Mercatus provided my scholarship to study economics at George Mason, a rather long time ago. I am most grateful for the life-changing intellectual experience.)

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From the Pages of Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers (p.189, ch.7)

The most successful entrepreneurs know what they do well, they know the market and the opportunities within it, and they choose those activities that create the most value. This is true in economic as well as political markets.

From the Pages of Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers (p.178, ch.7)

[W]hen the right elements come together at the right time and place and overwhelm the status quo, it is because special people make it happen. We call them political entrepreneurs.

From the Pages of Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers (p.176. ch.7)

While we started this book with Danny Biasone saving basketball, we end it with Norman Borlaug saving a billion lives. These stories are not that different. Both faced vested interests, which were reinforced by popular beliefs that things should be a certain way—that is, until a better idea came along.

From the Pages of Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers (p.174, ch.6)

Because there was a general belief that homeownership was a good thing, politicians found the public with open arms.... Everybody was winning—except Alfred Marshall, whose supply and demand curves were difficult to see through the haze of excitement at the time, and except Friedrich Hayek, whose competition as a discovery procedure was befuddled... In short, once politicians started getting credit for homeownership rates, the housing market was doomed.

From the Pages of Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers (p.166, ch.6)

Everyone responded rationally to the incentives before them. In short, the rules that guided homeownership changed over time, which in turn changed the incentives of these actors. And bad things happened.

From the Pages of Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers (p.153, ch.6)

They understood the economics. The ideas had already won in ... the regulatory agency itself. All that remained to be overcome were some vested interests and a handful of madmen in authority.

From the Pages of Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers (p.146, ch.6)

If the idea for auctions of spectrum use rights had been part of the public debate since at least 1959, why didn’t the relevant institutions change sooner? What interests stood in the way?

From the Pages of Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers (p.121, ch.5)

When an academic scribbler comes up with a new idea, it has to resonate well with widely shared beliefs, which in turn must overcome the vested interests at the table. Many forces come together to explain political change, even though it may seem like coincidence of time and place.

From the Pages of Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers (p.120, ch.5)

It’s the rules of the political game that deserve our focus, not politicians’ personalities or party affiliations.

From the Pages of Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers (p.119, ch.5)

In short, ideas are a type of higher-order capital in society. Like a society that is poor in capital and therefore produces little consumer value, a society that is poor in ideas and institutions will have bad incentives and therefore few of the desirable outcomes that people want.

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