Public Choice and Public Policy Project
AIER is pleased to announce as part of its ongoing research efforts the formation of the Public Choice and Public Policy Project. Modeled on the success of the Sound Money Project, this project creates a network of scholars that will offer regular commentary and in-depth analysis on public policy using the tools of Public Choice Economics.
Public Choice was described as “politics without romance” by Nobel Laureate James Buchanan. Buchanan along with an exceptional group of scholars that included fellow Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom, as well as Kenneth Arrow, Duncan Black, Gordon Tullock, Anthony Downs, William Niskanen, Mancur Olson and many others worked to create an approach to understanding public policy based in the realities of what government can and cannot achieve.
As the heirs to the broad legacy of the founders of Public Choice, the innovative scholars who make up this project seek to understand the reality of government decision-making and the consequences those decisions have on all of our lives. This group of scholars seeks to suggest alternatives to the romantic political notions that often dominate policy discussions.
Ryan Yonk
Director of The Public Choice and Public Policy Project
Senior Research Faculty, American Institute for Economic Research
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Articles
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Are EUAs Deregulation or Regulatory Capture?
“As the pandemic ends, there are plenty of frustrating examples of what went wrong. Let’s hope deregulation is remembered as an example of what went right.” ~ Raymond J. March
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Did We Need Operation Warp Speed?
“OWS’s efforts to develop Covid-19 vaccines are often considered the crowning achievement of what went right. Unfortunately, I fear its benefits are exaggerated, and its costs are just beginning.” ~ Raymond J. March
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Social Capital Mediates COVID-19 Vaccinations
“In Tocqueville’s visit to America, he is struck by an ‘equality of conditions’—his approach to social capital. Perhaps we should pay more attention to the equality of values people hold dear. Public health is important, but so is personal freedom.” ~ Byron B. Carson III
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Vaccine Cronyism
“As revealed through various documents well after OWS, we know the agreements limit vaccine developers not selected for OWS from expedited clinical trials and a transparent process for authorization.” ~ Raymond J. March
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FDA Continues to Meddle With Covid-19 Treatments
“When the FDA and other agencies curtail private efforts to battle Covid-19, including limiting the use of existing and established treatments, we place our trust in less capable hands.” ~ Raymond J. March
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Covid-19’s Ratchet Effect is Becoming Endemic
“Crises end, but newly designated powers and increased budgets governments receive throughout seldom end with them. Instead, government power exhibits a ratchet effect, never diminishing to pre-crisis levels.” ~ Raymond J. March
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What Can Hayek Say About Public Health?
“Public health as art, following Hayek, becomes a social science, or the study of how people make choices based on their values and tacit knowledge, how they interact with others, and how those behaviors and interactions influence health.” ~ Byron B. Carson III
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New Covid Variant – Same Government Blunders
“We know that mistakes in allocating medical goods to treat patients only make a challenging situation worse. The government has made many of these mistakes, and it doesn’t seem to be learning from them.” ~ Raymond J. March
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Benefits of a Balanced Public Health Strategy
“Disease mitigation policy that fails to incorporate diverse demographic, geographic, cultural, and even historical subtleties that characterize localities will see the same long tail of unintended consequences and policy failure.” ~ Peter C. Earle & Ryan M. Yonk
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Adam Smith, Capitation, and the Nonsense That Is the Proposed Wealth Tax
“While the economic implications of this proposal are sufficiently flimsy to discount its claimed purpose of revenue generation, the proposed wealth tax faces a greater obstacle to its adoption: it is blatantly unconstitutional.” ~ Phillip W. Magness
