IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/7083.html

The Public Critique of Welfare Economics: An Exploration

Author

Listed:
  • Timothy Besley
  • Stephen Coate

Abstract

The welfare economic method for analyzing the case for government intervention is often criticized for ignoring the political determination of policies. While many economists accept the thrust of this critique, exactly when and how political determination interferes with a welfare economic analysis is not well understood. This paper explores the logic of the critique in a specific context, demonstrating how political determination of policy affects the case for government intervention. We show that one form of intervention is likely to have an impact on others through the political process. These spillover effects may even provide a justification for interventions that the welfare economic approach would reject.

Suggested Citation

  • Timothy Besley & Stephen Coate, 1999. "The Public Critique of Welfare Economics: An Exploration," NBER Working Papers 7083, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:7083
    Note: PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w7083.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Fernández, Raquel & Rogerson, Richard, 1999. "Education finance reform and investment in human capital: lessons from California," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(3), pages 327-350, December.
    2. repec:cep:stitep:/1997/334 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Besley, Timothy & Coate, Stephen, 1998. "Sources of Inefficiency in a Representative Democracy: A Dynamic Analysis," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(1), pages 139-156, March.
    4. Martin J. Osborne & Al Slivinski, 1996. "A Model of Political Competition with Citizen-Candidates," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(1), pages 65-96.
    5. Timothy Besley & Stephen Coate, 1997. "An Economic Model of Representative Democracy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(1), pages 85-114.
    6. Bruce C. Greenwald & Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1986. "Externalities in Economies with Imperfect Information and Incomplete Markets," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 101(2), pages 229-264.
    7. Epple, Dennis & Romano, Richard E, 1996. "Public Provision of Private Goods," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 104(1), pages 57-84, February.
    8. James Buchanan & Viktor Vanberg, 1988. "The politicization of market failure," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 57(2), pages 101-113, May.
    9. Miguel Gouveia, 1996. "The public sector and health care," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 3(3), pages 329-349, July.
    10. Laffond G. & Laslier J. F. & Le Breton M., 1993. "The Bipartisan Set of a Tournament Game," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 182-201, January.
    11. J. A. Mirrlees, 1971. "An Exploration in the Theory of Optimum Income Taxation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 38(2), pages 175-208.
    12. Gene M. Grossman & Elhanan Helpman, 1996. "Electoral Competition and Special Interest Politics," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 63(2), pages 265-286.
    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. Iwan J Azis, 2019. "Cornell University & University of Indonesia, Indonesia," Annals of Social Sciences & Management studies, Juniper Publishers Inc., vol. 3(4), pages 87-91, June.
    2. Azis Iwan J, 2011. "Endogenous Institution in Decentralization," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 16(2), pages 1-18, May.

    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. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    2. Bierbrauer, Felix J. & Boyer, Pierre C., 2013. "Political competition and Mirrleesian income taxation: A first pass," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 1-14.
    3. Juan Carlos Berganza, 2000. "Politicians, voters and electoral processes: an overview," Investigaciones Economicas, Fundación SEPI, vol. 24(3), pages 501-543, September.
    4. Benoît Le Maux, 2009. "Governmental behavior in representative democracy: a synthesis of the theoretical literature," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 141(3), pages 447-465, December.
    5. Timothy Besley & Torsten Persson, 2011. "Pillars of Prosperity: The Political Economics of Development Clusters," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 9624, December.
    6. Antonio Merlo, 2005. "Whither Political Economy? Theories, Facts and Issues," PIER Working Paper Archive 05-033, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania, revised 01 Dec 2005.
    7. Zudenkova, Galina, 2010. "Sincere Lobby Formation," Working Papers 2072/151545, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Department of Economics.
    8. Eckhard Janeba, 2001. "Global Corporations and Local Politics: A Theory of Voter Backlash," NBER Working Papers 8254, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. César Martinelli & John Duggan, 2014. "The Political Economy of Dynamic Elections: A Survey and Some New Results," Working Papers 1403, Centro de Investigacion Economica, ITAM.
    10. Diego Aboal, 2020. "Electoral systems and economic growth," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 37(3), pages 781-805, October.
    11. Estache, Antonio & Foucart, Renaud, 2018. "The scope and limits of accounting and judicial courts intervention in inefficient public procurement," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 95-106.
    12. Janeba, Eckhard, 2004. "Global corporations and local politics: income redistribution vs. FDI subsidies," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 367-391, August.
    13. Daron Acemoglu & Davide Ticchi & Andrea Vindigni, 2011. "Emergence And Persistence Of Inefficient States," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 177-208, April.
    14. Blomquist, Soren & Christiansen, Vidar, 1999. "The political economy of publicly provided private goods," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 31-54, July.
    15. Pani, Marco & Perroni, Carlo, 2018. "Energy subsidies and policy commitment in political equilibrium," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 149-160.
    16. Didier Laussel & Raymond Riezman, 2013. "The sources of protectionist drift in representative democracies," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Raymond Riezman (ed.), International Trade Agreements and Political Economy, chapter 14, pages 225-246, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    17. Testa, Cecilia, 2003. "Government corruption and legislative procedures: is one chamber better than two?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 6642, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    18. P. Roberti, 2014. "Lobbying in a multidimensional policy space with salient issues," Working Papers wp922, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    19. Chatterjee, Somdeep & Mookerjee, Mehreen & Ojha, Manini & Roy, Sanket, 2023. "Does increased credibility of elections lead to higher political competition? Evidence from India," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    20. De Donder, Philippe & Hindriks, Jean, 2003. "The politics of progressive income taxation with incentive effects," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(11), pages 2491-2505, October.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H11 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Structure and Scope of Government
    • D60 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:7083. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.