The European public debt problem was in the making long before the 2007-2009 recession, as budget deficits had become endemic. A similar crisis is now developing in America, where the same fundamental causes have been at work. The Public Debt Problem analyzes the situation of public debts in...

The Trump administration has begun employing tariffs to protect American corporations from foreign competition. The administration believes protectionism will make America great again, but a look at the numbers and history reveal the tax will place a considerable burden on American households in...

This book asks a fundamental question, that is, whether "somebody in charge" could have prevented or solved the problem leading up to our current financial crisis. This book explores and answers that question from a scholarly and academic economic viewpoint

Public Choice analysis begins with a simple question: How are collective decisions made? The answer, of course, is that the decisions are made by policymakers - politicians and bureaucrats - and by voters. The starting idea of public choice theory is disarmingly simple: Individuals, when acting...

Economists have argued for two decades that smokers do not transfer costs to non-smokers as smokers, besides paying heavy tobacco taxes, typically die at an earlier age than non-smokers who ring up important old-age care costs. But the more important question is whether there are net social...

This paper explores the consequences of the oft ignored fact that public health insurance must actually be supplied by the state. Depending how the state is modeled, different health insurance outcomes are expected. The benevolent model of the state does not account for many actual features of...