Public Choice Interpretations of American Economic History

by Heckelman, Jac C.; Moorhouse, John C.; Whaples, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780792377214
• ISBN10: 0792377214
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-11-01
• Publisher: Kluwer Academic Pub

Summary

The chapters of this volume apply the tools of public choice theory to the types of questions which economic historians have traditionally addressed. By adding the insights of public choice economists to the traditional tools used to understand economic actors and institutions, the authors are able to provide fresh insights about many important issues of American history. Each contribution analyzes an episode in American economic history within a public choice framework of rational maximization. Agents or interest groups are interpreted as either responding in predictable ways to economic incentives put in play by government policy or attempting to influence government policy. Public Choice Interpretations of American Economic History includes eight essays that examine: Why states contributed to the national government under the Articles of Confederation. The major nineteenth-century transitions in the source of state revenues away from fees and investments and toward the property tax, and from state to local government funding of infrastructure. Three economic failures from the American West in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century: overgrazing of the northern plains, despoliation of the Yellowstone Basin, and low productivity of Indian communal lands. The impact on trusts of state-level anti-trust activities and the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The economic and political determinants of state-level WPA spending by the federal government during the New Deal. Why New Deal agricultural policies under the AAA were politically successful, while industrial policies under the NRA were scrapped. The Interaction between Fed policies and banks' decisions about membership in the Federal Reserve System in the period 1921-79. The influence of diversity among voters on states' decisions about how to regulate alcohol consumption in the decades after the end of prohibition.

Author Biography

Barbara J. Alexander is a Senior Associate at Charles River Associates Terry L. Anderson is executive director of the Political Economy Research Center in Bozeman, Montana and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution Jim F. Couch is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of North Alabama Keith L. Dougherty is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Florida International University Jac C. Heckelman is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Wake Forest University Peter J. Hill is George F. Bennett Professor of Economics at Wheaton College and Senior Associate at the Political Economy Research Center Gary D. Libecap is Karl Eller Professor of Economics at the University of Arizona John C. Moorhouse is Carroll Professor in the Department of Economics at Wake Forest University Felix Oberholzer-Gee is an Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania William F. Shughart II is Frederick A. P. Barnard Distinguished Professor of Economics and holder of the Robert M. Hearin Chair in Business Administration at the University of Mississippi Koleman S. Strumpf is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Werner Troesken is an Associate Professor of History and Economics at the University of Pittsburgh John J. Wallis is an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland-College Park Robert Whaples is an Associate Professor of Economics at Wake Forest University John H. Wood is R. J. Reynolds Professor of Economics at Wake Forest University

Table of Contents

List of Contributors	vii
Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	1	(10)
Jac C. Heckelman
John C. Moorhouse
Robert Whaples
Public Goods and Private Interests: An Explanation for State Compliance with Federal Requisitions, 1777-1789	11	(22)
Keith L. Dougherty
State Constitutional Reform and the Structure of Government Finance in the Nineteenth Century	33	(20)
John J. Wallis
Property Rights in the American West: The Tragedy of the Commons or the Tragedy of Transactions Costs	53	(24)
Terry L. Anderson
Peter J. Hill
Did the Trusts Want a Federal Antitrust Law? An Event Study of State Antitrust Enforcement and Passage of the Sherman Act	77	(28)
Werner Troesken
New Deal Spending and the States: The Politics of Public Works	105	(18)
Jim F. Couch
William F. Shughart II
Public Choice and the Success of Government-Sponsored Cartels: The Different Experience of New Deal Agricultural and Industrial Policies	123	(24)
Barbara J. Alexander
Gary D. Libecap
Federal Reserve Membership and the Banking Act of 1935: An Application to the Theory of Clubs	147	(16)
Jac C. Heckelman
John H. Wood
Local Liquor Control from 1934 to 1970	163	(18)
Koleman S. Strumpf
Felix Oberholzer-Gee
Index	181