Adam Smith was not a single-minded advocate of a laissez-faire market in which the minimal State had no more than a protective function. Rather, he was a pragmatic social thinker who in each case selected the tool that was the best suited to his meta-objective of rapid economic growth....

Review of: On Economic Institutions: Theory and Applications. Ed. by J. Groenewegen, C. Pitelis, S.-E. Sjöstrand. 1995. Edward Elgar: Cheltenham

Discusses James Buchanan′s contribution to the important topic of cost‐containment in the area of health care. Historical and ideational in its thrust, it seeks also to make a more general contribution by showing how the methodology of public choice can be applied to a specific issue in...