This book presents in one volume Professor Wiseman’s seminal work on the theory of costs and the economist’s treatment of the role of government. The major themes concern the subjectivity of costs and the unknowability of the future. From an initial scepticism about pricing rules,...

Spencer Pack compares and contrasts Aristotle’s, Smith’s and Marx’s theoretical systems on six fundamental issues: exchange value, money, capital, character, government, and change. This book also provides insights on issues concerning the continuing development of world money, saving,...

The author shows that ideological considerations and bargaining over the distribution of economic rents accruing from certain institutional arrangements are powerful shapers of institutional change. At the same time, the legacy of the past does not appear to have a clear or systematic effect on...

Emphasising a positive approach to dealing with terrorism (the carrot), this book provides a critique of deterrence policy (the stick) which can be ineffective and even counterproductive, and proposes three alternative and effective anti-terrorist policies: Decentralisation reduces vulnerability...

This book advances a social-theoretic treatment of public finance, which contrasts with the typical treatment of government as an agent of intervention into a market economy. To start, Richard Wagner construes government not as an agent but as a polycentric process of interaction, just as is a...

Because it is technically flawed and morally bankrupt, the author argues, the economist’s consequence-based, procedurally detached theory of the state has contributed to the growth of government. As part of the Kantian–Rawlsian contractarian project, this book seeks to return economics to...

This unique book in a relatively under-researched subject area will prove essential reading for academics, researchers and practitioners focusing on political economy, public finance and the economics of taxation.

This book explores the pre-conditions for conflict in terms of growth failure and critically appraises the greed and grievance theories common to conflict literature. It is argued that various institutional mechanisms of restraint that can be labeled the ‘social contract’ are crucial for...