A global wave of reform is reshaping the role of the state in national economies. This book examines the political economy of this megatrend, tracing the roots of the reforms to developments in public economics which emphasise problems of government.

A Brookings Institution Press and American Enterprise Institute publication When should government intervene in market activity and when is it best to let market forces take their natural course? How does the existing empirical evidence about government performance guide our answers to these questions? In this clear, concise book, Clifford Winston offers his innovative analysis—shaped by thirty years of evidence—to assess the efficacy of government interventions. Markets fail when it is possible to make one person better off without making someone else worse off, thus indicating inefficiency. Governments fail when an intervention is unwarranted because markets are performing well or when the intervention fails to correct a market problem efficiently. Winston concludes from existing research that the cost of government failure may actually be considerably greater than the cost of market failure: "My search of the evidence is not limited to policy failures. I will report success stories, but few of them emerged from my search." The prevalence of market failure is due to a lack of conviction in favor of markets, the inflexibility of intervening government agencies, and political forces that enable certain interest groups to benefit at the expense of society as a whole. Winston suggests that government policy can be improved by making greater use of market-oriented solutions that have already produced benefits in certain situations.

When market forces fail us, what are we to do? Who will step in to protect the public interest? The government, right? Wrong. The romantic view of bureaucrats coming to the rescue confuses the true relationship between economics and politics. Politicians often cite "market failure" as justification for meddling with the economy, but a group of leading scholars show the shortcomings of this view. In Government Failure, these scholars explain the school of study known as "public choice," which uses the tools of economics to understand and evaluate government activity. Gordon Tullock, one of the founders of public choice, explains how government "cures" often cause more harm than good. Tullock provides an engaging overview of public choice and discusses how interest groups seek favors from government at enormous costs to society. Displaying the steely realism that has marked public choice, Tullock shows the political world as it is, rather than as it should be. Gordon Brady scrutinizes American public policy, looking closely at international trade, efforts at regulating technology, and environmental policy. At every turn Brady points out the ways in which interest groups have manipulated the government to advance their own agendas. Arthur Seldon, a seminal scholar in public choice, provides a comparative perspective from Great Britain. He examines how government interventions in the British economy have led to inefficiency and warns about the political centralization promised by the European Community. Government Failure heralds a new approach to the study of politics and public policy. This book enlightens readers with the basic concepts of public choice in an unusually accessible way to show the folly of excessive faith in the state.

Scientific Essay from the year 2013 in the subject Business economics - Economic Policy, grade: A, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, language: English, abstract: This paper contributes to the discourse on the usefulness of market failure as an explanatory and justificatory tool for public policy and government action. Critically examining and evaluating market failure's theoretical robustness, ideological underpinnings, institutional claims and practical application, it argues that while the tool offers some insights into what governments (can) do, it fails to provide a compelling answer to the fundamental question of why governments exist. It is suggested that alternative approaches and theorizations such as institutional political economy and historical inquiry offer more comprehensive explanations for understanding the role and relationship between the state and the market.

After two generations of emphasis on governmental inefficiency and the need for deregulation, we now see growing interest in the possibility of constructive governance, alongside public calls for new, smarter regulation. Yet there is a real danger that regulatory reforms will be rooted in outdated ideas. As the financial crisis has shown, neither traditional market failure models nor public choice theory, by themselves, sufficiently inform or explain our current regulatory challenges. Regulatory studies, long neglected in an atmosphere focused on deregulatory work, is in critical need of new models and theories that can guide effective policy-making. This interdisciplinary volume points the way toward the modernization of regulatory theory. Its essays by leading scholars move past predominant approaches, integrating the latest research about the interplay between human behavior, societal needs, and regulatory institutions. The book concludes by setting out a potential research agenda for the social sciences.

A global wave of reform is fundamentally reshaping the role of the state in national economies. This book provides a fresh and accessible perspective on the political economy of this megatrend. It traces the theoretical roots of the reforms to developments in public economics which emphasize problems of government rather than market failure. It then breaks new ground in developing an economic theory of leadership to explain how policy leadership networks can strive to influence the direction of reform processes.

Criticisms of market outcomes often rest upon a notion of 'market failure,' meaning that the market has failed to align incentives and knowledge to produce an optimal outcome. Rejoinders to classic market failure arguments have taken several forms: that there are institutional or contracting solutions to various forms of market failures, that optimality is not a reasonable goal for real-world economic activity, or that government may fail as well. Similarly, Wittman (1995) and others have argued that concepts of government failure are equally problematic as the ordinary forces of political competition may render politicians sufficiently accountable to achieve realistically defined standards of efficiency. Even thinkers like Buchanan imagine that constitutional design may allow politics to fend off its tendency to become a zero-sum game. Both concepts are problematic in a world of entangled political economy in which market and government activity are interconnected. We argue that it is time to abandon both 'market failure' and 'government failure,' and instead focus on problems of institutional mismatch when the rules governing interaction are ill-suited to the problems that agents confront.