Until about two hundred years ago, almost everyone faced the prospect of a life that was poor, nasty, brutish, and short, with few if any prospects for betterment. For example, in today’s money, annual average per-capita income during the first millennium was constant at about $500. And most of the next century saw little in the way of expanded opportunities. Indeed, until the early nineteenth century, annual average per-capita income was only a couple of hundred dollars higher, and the average per-capita growth rate barely increased above zero.
Why have societies so consistently failed to generate high standards of living and why, even today, do so many societies live far from the frontier of the developed world’s economic possibilities?
Political Economy is a new title in the Routledge Major Works series, Critical Concepts in the Social Sciences. Bringing together canonical and the best cutting-edge scholarship from economics, political science, law, and other disciplines, this four-volume collection meets the need for an authoritative reference work to address these and other fundamental questions in political economy.
As serious research in and around the application of economic techniques to political issues flourishes as never before, the work assembled in the first two volumes in the collection (‘Theory: Social Choice and Elections’ and ‘Elections and Institutions’) allows users to understand the fundamental constraints that political processes impose on legal frameworks. Volume III (‘Politics, Law, and Economic Performance’) gathers the vital scholarship on important contributions to theories of economic growth and fluctuations, as well as key work on how those macroeconomic outcomes relate to politico-legal foundations. Finally, Volume IV (‘Governance’) takes a ‘micro-governance’ approach, exploring how, for example, corporate law and intra-firm politics influence the macroeconomic aggregates by which social welfare is often measured.
With comprehensive introductions to each volume, newly written by the editors, which place the collected materials in its historical and intellectual context, Political Economy is destined to be valued by scholars, advanced students, and policy-makers as a vital research and reference resource.
PROVISIONAL CONTENTS
Volume I: Theory: Social Choice and Elections
Part 1: Social Choice
1. Harold Hotelling, ‘Stability in Competition’, Economic Journal, 1929, 39, 41–57.
2. Kenneth J. Arrow, ‘Rational Choice Functions and Orderings’, Economica, 1959, 26, 121–7.
3. Amatya K. Sen and Prasanta K. Pattanaik, ‘Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Rational Choice under Majority Decisions’, Journal of Economic Theory, 1969, 1, 178–202.
4. Alan Gibbard, ‘Manipulation of Voting Schemes: A General Result’, Econometrica, 1973, 41, 4, 587–601.
5. Mark A. Satterthwaite, ‘Strategy-Proofness and Arrow’s Conditions: Existence and Correspondence Theorems for Voting Procedures and Social Welfare Functions’, Journal of Economic Theory, 1975, 10, 187–217.
Part 2: Equilibrium and Cycles
6. Charles R. Plott, ‘A Notion of Equilibrium and its Possibility under Majority Rule’, American Economic Review, 1967, 57, 787–806.
7. Otto Davis, Melvin J. Hinich, and Peter Ordeshook, ‘An Expository Development of a Mathematical Model of the Electoral Process’, American Political Science Review, 1970, 64, 426–48.
8. Gerald H. Kramer, ‘A Dynamical Model of Political Equilibrium’, Journal of Economic Theory, 1977, 16, 310–34.
9. Richard D. McKelvey and Norman Schofield, ‘Generalized Symmetry Conditions at a Core Point’, Econometrica, 1987, 55, 923–33.
10. Donald Saari, ‘A Chaotic Exploration of Aggregation Paradoxes’, SIAM Review, 2004, 37, 37–52.
11. William H. Riker, ‘Implications from the Disequilibrium of Majority Rule for the Study of Institutions’, American Political Science Review, 1980, 74, 432–46.
12. Jules Coleman and John Ferejohn, ‘Democracy and Social Choice’, Ethics, 1986, 97, 6–25.
13. Christian List and Robert Goodin, ‘Epistemic Democracy: Generalizing the Condorcet Jury Theorem’, Journal of Political Philosophy, 2001, 9, 277–306.
Part 3: Electoral Competition and Bargaining
14. David Baron, ‘A Spatial Bargaining Model of Government Formation in Parliamentary Systems’, American Political Science Review, 1991, 85, 137–64.
15. Jeffrey Banks and John Duggan, ‘A General Bargaining Model of Legislative Policy Making’, Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 2006, 1, 49–85.
16. John Duggan and Mark Fey, ‘Electoral Competition with Policy Motivated Candidates’, Games and Economic Behavior, 2005, 51, 490–522.
17. Gene Grossman and Elhanan Helpman, ‘Electoral Competition and Special Interest Politics’, Review of Economic Studies, 1996, 63, 265–86.
Volume II: Elections and Institutions
Part 4: Elections and Coalitions in Developed Polities
18. Donald Stokes, ‘Spatial Models and Party Competition’, American Political Science Review, 1963, 57, 368–77.
19. Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, ‘U.S. Presidential Elections 1968–1980: A Spatial Analysis’, American Journal of Political Science, 1984, 28, 283–312.
20. Gary Miller and Norman Schofield, ‘Activists and Partisan Realignment in the U.S.’, American Political Science Review, 2003, 97, 245–60.
21. Samuel Merrill, III, Bernard Grofman, and Thomas Brunell, ‘Cycles in American National Elections’, American Political Science Review, 2008, 102, 1–17.
22. Norman Schofield, ‘The Mean Voter Theorem: Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Convergent Equilibrium’, Review of Economic Studies, 2007, 74, 965–80.
23. John Patty, ‘Equilibrium Party Government’, American Journal of Political Science, 2008, 52, 636–55.
24. Elizabeth Penn, ‘A Model of Far-Sighted Voting’, American Journal of Political Science, 2009, 53, 36–54.
Part 5: Historical Discussion
25. William Riker, ‘The Heresthetics of Constitution-Making: The Presidency in 1787 with Comments on Determinism and Rational Choice’, American Political Science Review, 1984, 78, 1–16.
26. Douglass C. North and Barry R. Weingast, ‘Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England’, Journal of Economic History, 1989, 49, 803–32.
27. David Stasavage, ‘Credible Commitment in Europe’, Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, 2002, 18, 155–86.
28. Joel Mokyr and John Nye, ‘Distributional Coalitions, the Industrial Revolution and the Origins of Economic Growth in Britain’, Southern Economic Journal, 2007, 74, 50–70.
29. Kenneth Sokoloff and Stanley Engerman, ‘Institutions, Factor Endowments and Paths of Development in the New World’, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2000, 14, 217–32.
30. Philip Keefer, ‘What does Political Economy Tell us about Economic Development and Vice Versa?’, Annual Review of Political Science, 2004, 7, 247–72.
Part 6: Democracy and Autocracy
31. Mancur Olson, ‘Dictatorship, Democracy and Development’, American Political Science Review, 1993, 87, 567–76.
32. Jennifer Gandhi and Adam Przeworski, ‘Authoritarian Institutions and the Survival of Autocrats’, Comparative Political Studies, 2007, 40, 1279–301.
33. David Epstein et al., ‘Democratic Transitions’, American Journal of Political Science, 2006, 50, 551–68.
Volume III: Politics, Law, and Economic Performance
Part 7: Economic Growth
34. Robert M. Solow, ‘A Contribution to the Theory of Economic Growth’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1956, 70, 1, 65–94.
35. Robert E. Lucas, Jr., ‘On the Mechanics of Economic Development’, Journal of Monetary Economics, 1988, 22, 3–42.
36. Paul M. Romer, ‘Increasing Returns and Long-Run Growth’, Journal of Political Economy, 1986, 94, 5, 1002–37.
37. Oded Galor and Omer Moav, ‘Natural Selection and the Origin of Economic Growth’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2002, 117, 4, 1133–92.
Part 8: Business Cycles
38. Olivier Blanchard, ‘What Do We Know about Macroeconomics that Fisher and Wicksell Did Not?’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2000, 115, 4, 1375–409.
39. Robert E. Hall, ‘How Much Do We Understand about the Modern Recession?’, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, 2007, 2, 13–28.
Part 9: Law, Politics, and Economic Performance
40. Robert E. Hall and Charles I. Jones, ‘Why Do Some Countries Produce so Much More Output Per Worker than Others?’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1999, 114, 1, 83–116.
41. Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson, and James Robinson, ‘The Colonial Origins of Comparative Development: An Empirical Investigation’, American Economic Review, 2001, 91, 5, 1369–401.
42. Peter Blair Henry and Conrad Miller, ‘Institutions vs. Policies: A Tale of Two Islands’, American Economic Review, 2009, 99, 2, 261–7.
43. Daron Acemoglu, ‘Why not a Political Coase Theorem? Social Conflict, Commitment, and Politics’, Journal of Comparative Economics, 2003, 31, 4, 620–52.
44. Robert K. Fleck, ‘Voter Influence and Big Policy Change: The Positive Political Economy of the New Deal’, Journal of Political Economy, 2008, 116, 1, 1–37.
Volume IV: Governance
Part 10: Democracy and Macroeconomics
45. Robert Barro, ‘Democracy and Growth’, Journal of Economic Growth, 1996, 1, 1–27.
46. Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini, ‘Democracy and Development: The Devil in the Details’, American Economic Review, 2006, 96, 2, 319–24.
47. Robert Fleck, ‘When Should Market-Supporting Institutions be Established?’, Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, 2000, 16, 1, 129–54.
48. Alberto Alesina and Dani Rodrik, ‘Distributive Politics and Economic Growth’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1994, 109, 2, 465–90.
49. Dino Falaschetti, ‘Credible Commitments and Investment: Do Checks on the Ability or Incentive for Opportunism Matter?’, Economic Inquiry, 2003, 41, 4, 660–74.
50. Timothy Besley and Anne Case, ‘Does Electoral Accountability Affect Economic Policy Choices? Evidence from Gubernatorial Term Limits’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1995, 110, 3, 769–98.
51. Allan Drazen, ‘The Political Business Cycle After 25 Years’, NBER Macroeconomics Annual, 2000, 15, 75–117.
Part 11: Democracy and Corporate Governance
52. Bengt Holmstrom, ‘The Firm as a Subeconomy’, Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization, 1999, 15, 1, 74–102.
53. Yair Listokin, ‘Corporate Voting Versus Market Price Setting’, American Law and Economics Review, 2009, 11, 2, 608–35.
54. Lucian A. Bebchuk, ‘The Myth of Shareholder Franchise’, Virginia Law Review, 2007, 93, 3, 675–732.
55. Jeffrey N. Gordon, ‘Shareholder Initiative: A Social Choice and Game Theoretic Approach to Corporate Law’, University of Cincinnati Law Review, 1991, 60, 347–85.
56. Dino Falaschetti, ‘Shareholder Democracy and Corporate Governance’, Review of Banking and Financial Law, 2009, 28, 553–80.
57. Lynn A. Stout, ‘The Mythical Benefits of Shareholder Control’, Virginia Law Review, 2007, 93, 3, 789–809.
