IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/jeclit/v53y2015i3p667-74.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Learning from Failure: A Review of Peter Schuck's Why Government Fails So Often: And How It Can Do Better

Author

Listed:
  • David M. Levy
  • Sandra J. Peart

Abstract

Peter Schuck catalogs an overwhelming list of US government failures. He points to both structural problems (culture and institutions) and incentives. Despairing of cultural change, Schuck focuses on incentives. He relies on Charles Wolf's theory of nonmarket failures in which "internalities" replace the heavily-studied market failure from externalities (Wolf 1979). Internalities are evidence of a discord between the public goals by which a program is defended and the private goals of its administrators. What might economists contribute? We suggest that economists have neglected internalities because they take group goals as exogenously determined and we defend an alternative tradition in which group goals are endogenously determined. (JEL A11, D72, D82)

Suggested Citation

  • David M. Levy & Sandra J. Peart, 2015. "Learning from Failure: A Review of Peter Schuck's Why Government Fails So Often: And How It Can Do Better," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 53(3), pages 667-674, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:jeclit:v:53:y:2015:i:3:p:667-74
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/jel.53.3.667
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jel.53.3.667
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/jel/ds/5303/jel.53.3.667_ds.zip
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wolf, Charles, Jr, 1979. "A Theory of Nonmarket Failure: Framework for Implementation Analysis," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 22(1), pages 107-139, April.
    2. Levy, David M. & Peart, Sandra J., 2011. "Soviet growth and American textbooks: An endogenous past," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 78(1-2), pages 110-125, April.
    3. W. Braddock Hickman, 1958. "Introduction and Summary of Findings to "Corporate Bond Quality and Investor Experience"," NBER Chapters, in: Corporate Bond Quality and Investor Experience, pages 3-27, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. W. Braddock Hickman, 1958. "Index to "Corporate Bond Quality and Investor Experience"," NBER Chapters, in: Corporate Bond Quality and Investor Experience, pages 531-536, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. W. Braddock Hickman, 1958. "Corporate Bond Quality and Investor Experience," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number hick58-1, March.
    6. Ronnie Phillips, 1992. "The 'Chicago Plan' and New Deal Banking Reform," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_76, Levy Economics Institute.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jacky MATHONNAT & Aurore PELISSIER, 2017. "How a Results-Based Financing approach can contribute to the health Sustainable Development Goals - Policy-oriented lessons: what we know, what we need to know and don’t yet know," Working Papers P204, FERDI.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Richard Cantor & Frank Packer, 1996. "Sovereign risk assessment and agency credit ratings," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 2(2), pages 247-256, July.
    2. Ying Yi Tsai & Li-Gang Liu, 2010. "Emergence of Rating Agencies: Implications for Establishing a Regional Rating Agency in Asia," Working Papers id:2927, eSocialSciences.
    3. Robin Greenwood & Samuel G. Hanson, 2011. "Issuer Quality and the Credit Cycle," NBER Working Papers 17197, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Dieckelmann, Daniel, 2021. "Market sentiment, financial fragility, and economic activity: The role of corporate securities issuance," Discussion Papers 2021/6, Free University Berlin, School of Business & Economics.
    5. Bignon, Vincent & Flandreau, Marc, 2011. "The Economics of Badmouthing: Libel Law and the Underworld of the Financial Press in France Before World War I," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 71(3), pages 616-653, September.
    6. Ravi Kashyap, 2019. "Michael Milken: The Junk Dealer," Papers 1910.13882, arXiv.org.
    7. Ying Yi Tsai & Li-Gang Liu, 2010. "Emergence of Rating Agencies : Implications for Establishing a Regional Rating Agency in Asia," Finance Working Papers 22824, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    8. Taneli Mäkinen & Fan Li & Andrea Mercatanti & Andrea Silvestrini, 2020. "Effects of eligibility for central bank purchases on corporate bond spreads," BIS Working Papers 894, Bank for International Settlements.
    9. Michael J. Alderson & Terry L. Zivney, 1994. "On Computing Bond Returns: The Evaluation Of Low-Grade Debt," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 17(3), pages 403-415, September.
    10. Peter H. Lindert & Peter J. Morton, 1989. "How Sovereign Debt Has Worked," NBER Chapters, in: Developing Country Debt and the World Economy, pages 225-236, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Richard M. Duvall & John M. Cheney, 1984. "Bond Beta And Default Risk," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 7(3), pages 243-254, September.
    12. Díaz, Antonio & Escribano, Ana, 2021. "Sustainability premium in energy bonds," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    13. Mäkinen, Taneli & Li, Fan & Mercatanti, Andrea & Silvestrini, Andrea, 2022. "Causal analysis of central bank holdings of corporate bonds under interference," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    14. Robert L. Clark & Lee A. Craig & John Sabelhaus, 2011. "State and Local Retirement Plans in the United States," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 13685.
    15. Peter F. Basile & Sung Won Kang & John Landon-Lane & Hugh Rockoff, 2015. "Towards a History of the Junk Bond Market, 1910-1955," NBER Working Papers 21559, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Patrick A. Hays & Michael D. Joehnk & Ronald W. Melicher, 1979. "Differential Determinants Of Risk Premiums In The Public And Private Corporate Bond Markets," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 2(2), pages 143-152, September.
    17. Jens Hilscher & Mungo Wilson, 2011. "Credit ratings and credit risk," Working Papers 31, Brandeis University, Department of Economics and International Business School.
    18. Frank S. Skinner & Michalis Ioannides, 2005. ""FRS17" and the Sterling Double A Corporate Yield Curve," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(5-6), pages 1141-1169.
    19. John Lintner, 1972. "Finance and Capital Markets," NBER Chapters, in: Economic Research: Retrospect and Prospect, Volume 2, Finance and Capital Markets, pages 1-53, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Charles Calomiris, 1995. "The Costs of Rejecting Universal Banking: American Finance in the German Mirror, 1870-1914," NBER Chapters, in: Coordination and Information: Historical Perspectives on the Organization of Enterprise, pages 257-322, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • A11 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Role of Economics; Role of Economists
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:jeclit:v:53:y:2015:i:3:p:667-74. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.