Public Choice III

This book is a revision of Public Choice II. In revising the book, I have largely retained the structure of Public Choice II – most of the material contained in that volume reappears in this one. In some cases, this has resulted in very modest changes in a chapter and in quite substantial changes in others. Several new chapters have been written to cover topics that have cropped up or increased in importance since the previous edition was written. I have also attempted to retain the same level of difficulty as the previous version. Because the literature has become continuously more theoretical and mathematical, more mathematics appears in the new material than in the previous text, and the distinction between “easy” and “difficult” sections denoted by a * has become more arbitrary. Some may question my decision not to drop more material from the previous text, where little new work has appeared, to leave more space for new material. I have chosen not to go this route because I still think of the book as a survey of all of the major topics in public choice. That little new has appeared concerning Arrow impossibility theorems in recent years does not imply that the issues raised by this work are any less important, or that they should be omitted in a basic course in public choice – or so I believe.