This note describes an approach to teaching the public choice perspectives on voting using an episode from Comedy Central's animated television show, South Park. The episode titled, “Douche and Turd,” demonstrates the near-zero value of an individual vote, the intrinsic value individuals...

You're probably familiar with the earmarking of selective consumption taxes in your state—for example, gas tax revenues may be dedicated to highway funding. However, tax revenues don't always “stick” to the program that they're earmarked to. This chapter shows how earmarked taxes can serve...

Faced with looming fiscal issues after the most recent financial crisis, state governments have increasingly taken steps toward tax reform. The reforms they have undertaken range from lowering tax rates to removing exemptions and credits to simplifying the tax code. The relative success and...

Recent events, including the failed recall of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and the Chicago teachers strike, have shed light on the relationship between state fiscal policy and public-sector union power. While a literature has developed focusing on various aspects of the link between...

This paper provides a model of employee immolation and provides a case study of the effect that public influences on corporate policy has on the welfare of employees. Conventional wisdom would suggest that efforts to improve the lives of workers within oppressive labor conditions would be viewed...

The Global Financial Crisis is a unique investigation into the causes of the most savage economic downturn experienced since the Great Depression. Employing wide and divergent perspectives – which are themselves critically examined – this study analyses the measures that have been...

This paper analyzes hooligans: rival football fans bent on brawling. It develops a simple theory of hooligans as rational agents. We model hooligans as persons who derive utility from conflict. Legal penalties for conflicting with non-hooligans drive hooligans to form a kind of ?fight club?...