Interventionism
Management versus Ownership: The Road-Privatization Debate
To build a roads system, an administrative price mechanism—commercialization—may yield some solutions to the problems of public roads but it gives rise to other problems
New Perspectives on the Economic Approach to Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy may denote either a means of management, or a particular kind of organization. Characteristics of such organizations include the existence of a discretionary budget
Ludwig von Mises on the Gold Standard and Free Banking
George Selgin and Lawrence White have sought to tie their modern free banking school to the views of Ludwig von Mises. Whatever the validity of their own views on the gold standard
The Commanding Heights: The Battle between Government and the Marketplace That Is Remaking the Modern World, by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw
Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw have produced a book that is fundamentally optimistic that markets will continue to be the driving force behind world events, and that price decision-making will eventually prevail over political decision-making.
Review of The Bias Against Guns: Why Almost Everything You’ve Heard About Gun Control is Wrong, by John R. Lott, Jr.
The Bias Against Guns is overall a less technical book than More Guns, Less Crime, but in its later chapters, quite a few portions are still way over the heads of most laypersons.
Comment on Canice Prendergast’s A Theory of ‘Yes Men’
It is within the bowels of government where the real yes-men problem lies. Here, there is no automatic feedback mechanism of the market to rely upon, to quell any incipient tendencies in the direction of yes-manning.
A Note on the Canard of “Asymmetric Information” As a Source of Market Failure
The notion that so-called asymmetric information is a source of market failure is deeply flawed. Asymmetric information is essentially a synonym for “the division of knowledge (and labor) in society,”
Review of Alternative Route: Toward Efficient Urban Transportation, by Clifford Winston and Chad Shirley
The authors’ proposed solutions are interesting but ultimately disappointing. Laudably, they do call for what they believe to be the privatization of urban transit.
The Political Economy of the New Deal, by Jim F. Couch and William F. Shughart II
Couch and Shughart’s book brings together a number of public-choice studies by other authors which have appeared in various journals, but have never been formally connected to each other in a single book.