Public Choice Economics and the Salem Witchcraft Hysteria provides an economics perspective on the witchcraft episode, and adds to the growing body of work analyzing prominent historical events using the tools of economics.
This book provides numerous examples that apply the modern theory of bureaucracy developed in Breton and Wintrobe (1982 and 1986) to the Nazi Holocaust. More specifically, the book argues, as do Breton and Wintrobe (1986), that the subordinates in the Nazi bureaucracy were not “following orders” as they claimed during the war crimes trials at Nuremberg and elsewhere, but were instead exhibiting an entrepreneurial spirit in competing with one another in order to find the most efficient way of exacting the Final Solution. This involved engaging in a process of exchange with their superiors, wherein the subordinates offered the kinds of informal services that are not codified in formal contracts. In doing so, they were competing for the rewards, or informal payments not codified in formal contracts, that were conferred by those at the top of the bureaucracy. These came in the form of rapid promotion, perquisites (pecuniary and in-kind), and other awards. The types of exchanges described above are based on “trust,” not formal institutions.
This edited volume contains a collection of essays that reflect a broad area of economic education inquiry ranging from teaching assessment to the philosophy of the classroom. Written by economics scholars from across the nation, this volume presents recent discoveries in presentation, assessment, and other aspects of economic education at colleges and universities in the U.S. These articles represent but a sample of the growing commentary among academics on the importance of effective teaching and economic education scholarship.
Using theoretical and empirical approaches from the economics and political science disciplines, this book examines the social opportunity costs of American public policy towards national saving. The primary focus of the text is on the institutional arrangements of the U.S. Social Security system, as they relate to Americans' decisions to save and invest, and to interest groups' decisions to lobby Congress for political privileges. The book presents statistical evidence suggesting that the social opportunity costs of U.S. policy in this area are enormous. Lower bound estimates put the loss in private savings, due to savers' decisions to substitute Social Security for private retirement plans, at approximately $349 billion dollars annually. When the lobbying costs associated with efforts to redistribute the money in the Social Security Trust Fund are included, this figure rises by perhaps as much as $15 billion. The results and discussion in this work should serve as a useful addition to the policy debates in this area.
Using theoretical and statistical models, along with several new sets of empirical results, this book examines the impact of legislative television on the political process in the United States. It examines the relationship between political-economic variables and the tendency to adopt/support live television in the U.S. Congress, the impact of television on the length of U.S. House and Senate sessions, the use of parliamentary procedures in the presence (absence) of television cameras, and the role that legislative television has played in improving incumbents' success rates in primary/general federal elections. Where possible, the economic costs to taxpayers of legislators' use of television cameras, in order to enhance their re-election prospects, are also considered.
Public Choice Economics and the Salem Witchcraft Hysteria provides an economics perspective on the witchcraft episode, and adds to the growing body of work analyzing prominent historical events using the tools of economics.
This book provides numerous examples that apply the modern theory of bureaucracy developed in Breton and Wintrobe (1982 and 1986) to the Nazi Holocaust. More specifically, the book argues, as do Breton and Wintrobe (1986), that the subordinates in the Nazi bureaucracy were not “following orders” as they claimed during the war crimes trials at Nuremberg and elsewhere, but were instead exhibiting an entrepreneurial spirit in competing with one another in order to find the most efficient way of exacting the Final Solution. This involved engaging in a process of exchange with their superiors, wherein the subordinates offered the kinds of informal services that are not codified in formal contracts. In doing so, they were competing for the rewards, or informal payments not codified in formal contracts, that were conferred by those at the top of the bureaucracy. These came in the form of rapid promotion, perquisites (pecuniary and in-kind), and other awards. The types of exchanges described above are based on “trust,” not formal institutions.
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