Book Review: The Economics of Public Issues

• Date: 01 September 1972
• DOI: 10.1177/0003603X7201700314
• Published date: 01 September 1972
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

BOOK

REVIEWS

967

Douglass C. North

and

Rog-er

LeRoy Miller, The Economics

of

Public Issues, New York:

Harper

&Row (1971), 158

pp., $2.95 paperback.

In

this amusing and original book,

Professors

North

and

:Miller

set

out to demonstrate the cutting power of conven-

tional economics when applied to a wide

variety

of issues

ranging from population

and

poverty

at

one end of the spec-

trum, to airplane stacking, digging

for

clams, and prostitu-

tion

at

the other. Designed

for

introductory economics

courses, it may well win a wider audience by virtue of

itsab-

senee of a textbook-like

format

(thirty

"issues"

are

examined

in

short

anecdotal analyses of roughly five pages each)

and

by the lucidity of

its

explanations which manage to explain

a

great

deal of economics without jargon, diagrams, formulas

or

bad

writing. Not least,

for

the professional economist, this

little book is to be commended not only as a tour de force in

the applied use of economics,

but

also as an interesting exam-

ple of

what

I believe to be the limitations of conventional

economics as a science.

Although the book covers a wide range of

issues-abortion

repeal,

auto

safety standards, usury, medical care, profes-

sional

sports

contracts, crime prevention

and

other beguiling

subjects in addition to those I have mentioned

at

the

outset-

the tools of analysis it applies to the elucidation of these is-

sues

are

essentially

very

few. One of them,

perhaps

the most

important, is the concept of opportunity

cost-the

basic no-

tion

that

all economic activity involves choice, and

that

the

"cost" of

any

action involving the use of limited human energy

and

natural

resources is the potential usefulness of

that

en-

ergy

and those resources applied to some other purpose. The

idea of opportunity cost serves North

and

Miller,

for

example,

in showing the

reader

that

clamming is not a

"free"

pursuit,

even though no charge may be levied

for

it,

or

that

the alter-

native to

"pay"

TV is not

truly

free TV, or

that

"free"

bread

or

transportation

also exacts its pound of flesh if one looks