A Potentially Fruitful Collection.

AuthorCarden, Art

Public Choice Analyses of American Economic History, vols. 1-3

Edited by Joshua Hall and Marcus Witcher

199, 178, and 206 pp.; Springer, 2018-2019

West Virginia University's Joshua Hall is the very definition of an academic entrepreneur: someone who notices a misalignment in production and realigns it. This collection, edited by Hall and historian Marcus Witcher of Huntingdon College, is an example of such entrepreneurship and a timely contribution in light of the ways in which economics--and public choice economics in particular--have come under fire from the "new history of capitalism."

I talked with Hall about this project at the 2019 Southern Economic Association meeting. He described his and Witcher's strategy for the collection: they looked for interesting papers that have circulated or sat in filing cabinets for quite some time--decades, in some cases--unpublished. This is how they got contributions from a mix of young, more established, and very prominent scholars. There are a lot of names that will be very familiar to readers of the public choice literature and there are contributions from several prominent economic historians.

Suffice it to say that I am sympathetic to this project (and, I should acknowledge, professionally and personally acquainted with some of the contributors). Hence, I worried that I would have too-great expectations for the project. Nonetheless, it largely does not disappoint. Some of the contributions are straightforward cliometric-quantitative/historical--analysis applied to political issues. Others read like proposals or proofs of concept. Some of the analyses, like the papers by Phil Magness on southern secession and Jayme Lemke and Julia Norgaard on the role of "club women" in the provision of public goods, are counterexamples--critics might say the exceptions that prove the rule--to the criticism that public choice ignores issues of race, class, and gender.

What scholars should write I The set begins promisingly with a contribution from King's College economist Vincent Geloso that marries one of the traditional concerns of public choice theory--public debt and budgeting--with the oppression of a minority and an explanation of the American Revolution. Geloso studies the expulsion of the French-speaking Acadians from Atlantic Canada beginning in 1755 and points out some familiar tropes that will be familiar to observers of oppression. (For instance, the Acadians were "lazy" according to stereotypes). He...

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