The welfare economics of markets, voting, and predation

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Bibliographic Information

The welfare economics of markets, voting, and predation

Dan Usher

Manchester University Press, c1992

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Includes index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

This work dwells upon two themes, each of which differs from traditional welfare economics - predation or taking (as a source of inefficiency in the economy) and the tension between voting and markets as alternative methods of decision-making. Predation is seen as a form of economic theft on the part of either the public or the private sector, for example, where theft, banditry, rent-seeking, over-use of common property and, in some cases, advertising, speculation and litigation exemplify private sector taking because they waste resources in competition over a fixed prize and, conversely, where tariffs favouring one industry at the expense of others, subsidies to politically powerful groups or firms, over-expansion of departments of government at the instigation of influential bureaucrats, reservation of jobs for members of a privileged community are instances of public sector taking.

Table of Contents

  • A change of emphasis
  • the rise and fall of the public sector in the estimation of the economists
  • anarchy
  • despotism
  • the liberal society
  • transitions
  • departures from efficiency in the private sector of a liberal society
  • the public sector in a liberal society
  • predatory government.

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