Public Choice: The Normative Core

The economic analysis of politics goes by many names: political economy, rational choice theory, formal political theory, social choice, economics of governance, endogenous policy theory, and public choice.  Each of these labels picks out a subtly different intellectual tradition.  Each tradition expands our understanding of the world.  My favorite, though, remains public choice.

As a GMU professor, you may attribute this to home-team favoritism.  Yet before I was a professor at GMU, I was a stu...