Buchanan's contributions through 1984 are surveyed in six areas: (A) debt, fiscal illusion, and Keynesian criticisms, (B) London School of Economics cost approach, (C) methodological individualism and the economics of politics, (D) welfare price theory, (E) rent-seeking and polity failure, and...

Antitrust enforcement makes it difficult to test theories of cartel formation because most attempts to form cartels are blocked. However, federal laws allow U.S. produce growers to operate marketing cartels through devices called marketing orders. These cartels use quantity controls and quality...

From at least 1893 economists have viewed income as an important determinant of government size and the hypothesis that government size increases with income is now enshrined in the literature as Wagner’s Law. More recently, however, public choice economists and growth theorists have tended to...

We examine conditions under which group consumption is likely to involve informal and tacit reciprocity agreements rather than formal contracts and the price system. Our model shows that informal reciprocity agreements are more likely to be used when transaction costs of formal agreements are...