TRADE,MERCANTILISM AND NATION‐BUILDING

Most treatments of protectionism by economists try to account for the departure on a case‐by‐case basis. However, protectionism is often an element in a systematic political economy. This was developed by authors such as List, and persists today. Debating it requires normative as well as analytical arguments in a political economy approach.     

CURRENT GLOBAL WARMING ALARMISM AND THE MONT PELERIN SOCIETY'S LONG‐TERM AGENDA1

In a speech to the Mont Pelerin Society, the President of the Czech Republic argued that environmentalism, and climate alarmism in particular, is a vehicle for advocating, drafting and implementing large‐scale government intervention and an unprecedented suppression of human freedom.     

PROBLEMS OF PUBLIC HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE USA: CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES

High costs and low graduation rates characteristic of 21^st‐century US public higher education stem from the bout of rent‐seeking attributable to the post‐Sputnik explosion in research spending and the consequent crusade to enrol new students, with diminishing concern for academic aptitude. New policies that tighten admission standards, encourage earlier graduation and enhance financial aid for the truly needy would constructively address these problems, as would incentives for faculty members to curtail outside consulting.     

Victim or Victimizer: Firm Responses to Government Corruption

What is the relationship between government corruption and firm performance? To address this question, I conduct a review of articles published in the leading management journals on government‐business interactions pertaining to rent‐seeking activities and integrate findings from the fields of international business, social issues in management, public organization, institutional change, and corporate political activity. I find that while much empirical work corroborates the earlier findings suggesting a corrosive impact of government corruption on firm performance in general, management research also points to the heterogeneous impact of government corruption on individual firm performance, driven by the strategic activities conducted by firms in response to corruption. I propose an integrative model of firm strategy vis‐à‐vis corruption that predicts the activity choice of the firm as predicated by its organizational structure, political resources, industry regulation, and surrounding political and social institutions.     

The Social Costs of Innovation Policy

Innovation policy is designed to produce social benefits by solving a market failure problem associated with private investment in new knowledge. Yet the social costs of these policy interventions are routinely ignored. We use the Djankov et al. (2003) institutional possibility frontier model to analyse the trade‐offs between the social costs of disorder and those of dictatorship that particular innovation policies impose. We show how different innovation policies impose different types of social costs. We conclude that the case for public support for innovation policies is often both distorted and overstated because of failure to account for social costs.     

CLIMATE POLITICS,STRATEGIC BEHAVIOUR,HOLD‐OUTS,FREE RIDERS AND RENT‐SEEKERS

This paper examines recent developments in US climate change policy from a public choice perspective. Policies such as ‘cap and trade’ threaten to impose substantial costs on individuals and businesses, yet their effectiveness at reducing greenhouse gas emissions is questionable. Support for legislation that restricts emissions can partly be explained by the strategic behaviour of various special interests.     

COMMENT ON THE 2011 WINCOTT LECTURE, ‘CONTROL RIGHTS (AND WRONGS)’

Over a long period leading up to the current financial crisis, small banks within a small banking system were replaced by unsafe, large banks within a huge banking system. The banks have now grown so big and so dangerous that they have the capacity to wreck economies and bring down governments.