BD Caplan - 2008 - books.google.com
Page 1. THE MYTH OF THE RATIONAL VOTER WHY DEMOCRACIES CHOOSE
BAD POLICIES BRYAN CAPLAN Page 2. THE MYTH OF THE RATIONAL VOTER
Page 3. Page 4. THE MYTH OF THE RATIONAL VOTER WHY ...
B Caplan - The Economic Journal, 2002 - Wiley Online Library
Differences between the general public's positive economic views and economists'
resemble other judgemental anomalies: Laypeople and experts systematically disagree. I
analyse this puzzle using data from the Survey of Americans and Economists on the ...
B Caplan - Kyklos, 2001 - Wiley Online Library
The paper presents a model of 'rational irrationality'to explain why political and religious
beliefs are marked not only by low information (as the notion of rational ignorance
highlights), but also by systematic bias and high certainty. Being irrational–ie, deviating ...
B Caplan - Southern Economic Journal, 1999 - JSTOR
Self-designated Austrian economists have two different views of modern neoclassical
economics. Some, such as FA Hayek, take issue with certain aspects of neoclassical
economics without disputing its fundamentals. Others, most notably Ludwig von Mises and ...
B Caplan - Journal of Law and Economics, 2001 - JSTOR
Abstract The positive economic beliefs of economists and the general public systematically
differ. What factors make noneconomists think more like economists? Using the “Survey of
Americans and Economists on the Economy,” this paper shows people think more like ...
B Caplan - Public Choice, 2001 - Springer
Models of inefficient political failure have been criticized forimplicitly assuming the
irrationality of voters (Wittman, 1989, 1995, 1999; Coate and Morris, 1995). Building on
Caplan's (1999a, 1999b) model of``rational irrationality'', the current papermaintains that ...
B Caplan - Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2003 - Elsevier
Economists typically object to preference-based explanations of human behavior;
differences in preferences “explain everything and therefore nothing”. But this argument is
only correct assuming that no empirical evidence exists to discipline preference-based ...
B Caplan - Public Choice, 2006 - Springer
Abstract Terrorism in general, and suicidal terrorism in particular, is popularly seen as
“irrational,” but many economists and political scientists argue otherwise. This paper
distinguishes three different senses of irrationality: unresponsiveness to incentives, ...
B Caplan… - The Review of Austrian Economics, 2003 - Springer
There is a tension between libertarians' optimism about private supply of public goods and
skepticism of the viability of voluntary collusion (Cowen 1992, Cowen and Sutter 1999).
Playing off this asymmetry, Cowen (1992) advances the novel argument that the “free ...
B Caplan - Rationality and Society, 2003 - rss.sagepub.com
Abstract Many political failure arguments implicitly assume that voters are irrational. This
article argues that this assumption is both theoretically and empirically plausible: in politics,
rationality, like information, is a collective good that individuals have little incentive to ...
B Caplan - Eastern Economic Journal, 2000 - JSTOR
Economists have characterized beliefs as" rational," if agents satisfy Bayesian probability
axioms; or, more strongly, if they also satisfy the rational expectations assumption1 [Sheffrin,
1996; Wittman, 1995]. A diverse body of experimental evidence shows that individuals' ...
B Caplan - Southern Economic Journal, 2001 - JSTOR
This paper develops a formal theory that combines power-maximizing" Leviathan" political
parties with well-defined imperfections in the political process. The model implies that both
parties tend to make government larger as their likelihood of electoral victory increases. ...
B Caplan - Public Choice, 2001 - Springer
Much of the public finance literature argues that localgovernments behave competitively due
to residents' ease of exitand entry. The model presented here challenges this
widespreadconclusion. Though it is costless to relocate to anotherlocality, the presence of ...
B Caplan… - Review of Political Economy, 2005 - Taylor & Francis
The political economy of Ludwig von Mises and Frederic Bastiat has been largely ignored
even by their admirers. We argue that Mises' and Bastiat's views in this area were both
original and insightful. While traditional public choice generally maintains that democracy ...
B Caplan - Social Science Quarterly, 2002 - Wiley Online Library
Objectives. Economic models of politics typically make two assumptions about voters: first,
their motives are egocentric, not sociotropic; second, their beliefs are rational, not subject to
systematic bias. Political scientists have presented strong evidence against the first ...
B Caplan… - The American Economic Review, 2004 - JSTOR
Economic globalization has drawn fresh attention to cultural issues. The Uruguay Round of
trade negotiations debated whether there should be a protectionist" cultural exception" for
television and movies, as practiced by the French, Canadians, Brazilians, South Koreans, ...
B Caplan - European Journal of Political Economy, 2003 - Elsevier
The paper develops an economic–political model to explain why the convergence
hypothesis fails even though good economic policies seem to be a sufficient condition for
strong economic growth (Sachs, J., Warner, A., 1995a. Economic convergence and ...
S Beaulier… - Kyklos, 2007 - Wiley Online Library
Critics often argue that government poverty programs perversely make the poor worse off by
encouraging unemployment, out-of-wedlock births, and other 'social pathologies.'However,
basic microeconomic theory tells us that you cannot make an agent worse off by ...
B Caplan - Journal of International Money and Finance, 2002 - Elsevier
Wartime periods have frequently been treated as natural macroeconomic experiments, but
the international pooled time series evidence presented here shows that the literature has
over-emphasized the experience of the United States and the United Kingdom. Wars ...
B Caplan - Public Choice, 2006 - Springer
Abstract Beliefs about normative economics appear to be primarily determined by
sociotropic rather than egocentric variables.(Sears & Funk, 1990; Citrin & Green, 1990)
Using the Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy, the current paper finds ...
B Caplan - Critical Review, 2004 - Taylor & Francis
Abstract In the 1920s, Austrian‐school economists began to argue that in a fully socialized
economy, free of competitively generated prices, central planners would have no way to
calculate which methods of production would be the most economical. They claimed that ...
B Caplan - Econ Journal Watch, 2005 - econjwatch.org
Donald Wittman's" Why Democracies Produce Efficient Results"(1989) should be the envy of
every heterodox economist. It has virtually no math; it has no econometrics; and it boldly
tackles one of the biggest of the Big Questions—the relative merits of democracy versus ...
B Caplan - Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, 2001 - libertarianstudies.org
In my critique of Austrian economics1 (Caplan 1999), I carved out a vir-tually unique
position: Despite the Austrians' professed devotion to “realism” against neoclassical
pragmatism, the latter approach is in fact far more realistic than the former. My critics ( ...
B Caplan - Journal of Public Economics, 2001 - Elsevier
The current paper models power-maximizing politicians' behavior subject to imperfect
political competition and perfect citizen mobility. It then analyzes the welfare implications of
federal and non-federal structures. The model abstracts from both heterogeneous ...
B Caplan… - Unpublished. Link, 2006 - econfaculty.gmu.edu
Abstract: Education is by far the strongest predictor of whether a non-economist will share
the economic beliefs of the average economist.(Caplan 2002a, 2001) Is the effect of
education as large as it seems, or is it inflated by ability bias?(Card 2001; Krueger and ...
B Caplan - Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, 2003 - Springer
Conclusion Contrary to Block, the synthetic a priori has little to do with our dispute. My
critique of the Austrians is not that their methods are “unscientific,” but that their most
distinctive positions are false or overstated. Yet Block's latest reply does inadvertently ...
[CITATION] The Literature of Nonviolent Resistance and Civilian-Based Defense
B Caplan - Humane Studies Review, 1992
B Caplan - Econ Journal Watch, 2005 - econjwatch.org
WITTMAN HAS WRITTEN A CHARACTERISTICALLY ENGAGING response to my critique.
While he emphasizes his continued disagreement with me, I am struck by the important
concessions he makes. In particular, he has virtually abandoned the rational expectations ...
[CITATION] forthcoming." Rational Irrationality and the Microfoundations of Political Failure."
B Caplan - Public Choice
B Caplan - Legal Notes No, 1997 - libertarian.co.uk
Law, even more than national defense, appears to be the perfect example of a public good
which simply must be supplied by the government if society is to exist at all. It is non-
excludable because everyone enjoys the fruits of law merely by living in society. And it is ...
B Caplan - Public Choice, 2004 - Springer
This book is quite a bit better than expected. The preceding definition sounds like a weak
motivation for a book. And given the powerful body of evidence against rational choice
political science, I was skeptical of the value of extending the approach to yet another area ...
B Caplan - Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, 2007 - econfaculty.gmu.edu
" We are at the dawn of a new age," said James Taggart, from above the rim of his
champagne glass..." We will set men free of the rule of the dollar... We will build a society
dedicated to higher ideals, and we will replace the aristocracy of money by–"
B Caplan - Critical Review, 2007 - Taylor & Francis
ABSTRACT Tetlock's Expert Political Judgment is a creative, careful, and mostly convincing
study of the predictive accuracy of political experts. My only major complaints are that
Tetlock (1) understates the predictive accuracy of experts, and (2) does too little to ...
[CITATION] The Critics of Keynesianism: A Survey
B Caplan - Economic Notes, 1997
[CITATION] Nonviolent resistance: Theory and history
B Caplan - Humane Studies Review, 1994
B Caplan - Rationality and society, 2006 - rss.sagepub.com
Abstract Even confirmed economic imperialists typically acknowledge that economic theory
does not apply to the seriously mentally ill. Building on psychiatrist Thomas Szasz's
philosophy of mind, this article argues that most mental illnesses are best modeled as ...
B Caplan - Economic Notes, 1996 - libertarian.co.uk
Let us suppose that our national highway system is a “natural monopoly”, as economists use
the phrase. How could it be privatized? In particular, how could it be privatized in a way
which would:(a) create private enterprises' usual incentives to keep prices and costs low ...
B Caplan… - Intelligence, 2010 - Elsevier
Education is by far the strongest predictor of whether a non-economist will share the
economic beliefs of the average economist.(Caplan, 2001) Is the effect of education as large
as it seems? Or is education largely a proxy for cognitive ability? Using data from the ...
[CITATION] The 4 Boneheaded Biases of Stupid Voters:(And we're all stupid voters
B Caplan - REASON-SANTA BARBARA THEN LOS …, 2007 - REASON FOUNDATION
B Caplan - Chronicle of Higher Education, 2009 - eric.ed.gov
Abstract: Sociologists focus on the theory that parents spend less time with their kids than
they used to. But fact-checking popular perceptions about the evolution of parenting
indicates that fathers spend much more time with their children than they used to (from a ...
[CITATION] The 18-cent solution
B Caplan - New York Times, 2008
[CITATION] Economic Calculation, Quantitative Laws, and the
B Caplan - Impossibility” of Socialism,” Public Choice Working …, 2002
[CITATION] From Musgrave to Shaviro
A Kling… - EconLog: Issues and insights in economics, 2007
[CITATION] ndd Systematically Biased Beliefs about Economics: Robust Evidence of Judgmental Anomalies from the Survey of Americans and Economists on the …
B Caplan - Unpublished ms
[CITATION] Why I Am Not an Austrian Economist... and Why You Shouldn't Be Either
B Caplan - Southern Economic Journal, 1999
B Caplan - Social Philosophy and Policy, 2009 - Cambridge Univ Press
Most societies throughout history have been dictatorships. These dictatorships have,
unsurprisingly, emphasized the interests of the ruler at the expense of the ruled. The result
has been policies that are, according to almost all ethical standards, bad. From this ...
[CITATION] nda The Idea Trap: The Political Economy of Growth Dispersion
B Caplan - Unpublished ms
[CITATION] forthcoming b. What Makes People Think Like Economists? Evidence from the Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy
B Caplan - Journal of Law and Economics
[CITATION] Museum of Communism
B Caplan - 2003 - Bryan Caplan.
[CITATION] Distributive justice in a pure service economy: how the truth of libertarianism follows from the wrongness of slavery
BD Caplan… - 1996 - Libertarian Alliance
S Beaulier… - George Mason University, Global …, 2002 - ppe.mercatus.org
Critics often argue that government poverty programs perversely make the poor worse off by
discouraging labor force participation, encouraging out-of-wedlock births, and so on.
However, basic microeconomic theory tells us that you cannot make an agent worse off ...
B Caplan - The Economists' Voice, 2008 - urbiloquio.com
Economists' Voice www. bepress. com/ev September, 2008 and test them for systematic
error, systematic errors are easy to find. More importantly, they are generally very large, and
in the direction that modern teachers—not to mention Adam Smith and Frederic Bastiat— ...
B Caplan - Unpublished manuscript. Department of …, 2000 - econfaculty.gmu.edu
Abstract: Recent empirical studies of the effects of fiscal policy generally fail to control for
money. This is especially problematic if one uses war-related variables to identify
exogenous shocks (Ramey and Shapiro [1997]; Edelberg, Eichenbaum, and Fisher [1998] ...
B Caplan… - Review of Austrian Economics, 2001 - direct.mises.org
Abstract: There is a tension between libertarians' optimism about private supply of public
goods and their skeptical of the viability of voluntary collusion.(Cowen 1992; Cowen and
Sutter 1999) Playing off this asymmetry, Cowen (1992) advances the novel argument that ...
B CAPLAN - 1997 - libertarian.co.uk
Orthodox welfare economics extols the virtues of socalled “perfect competition”, the most
peculiar aspect of which is that there are a huge number of tiny firms in each market. The
upshot of this is that each firm's demand curve is perfectly horizontal, which implies (as ...
B Caplan - The Encyclopedia of Public Choice, 2003 - Springer
Information is a good like any other. The primary benefit of information is that it reduces the
probability of acting on false beliefs; the primary cost is that acquiring information requires
time. Basic microeconomics predicts that (ignoring risk-aversion) individuals acquire ...
B Caplan - The Review of Austrian Economics, 2009 - Springer
Abstract Timothy Besley's Principled Agents? carefully surveys the modern social science
literature on political agency problems and tries to chart a sensible middle course between
the naive assumption that politicians maximize the public welfare and the pessimism of ...
[CITATION] Comment on Tyler Cowen's' The Economics of Anarchy.'
B Caplan - Unpublished manuscript. Princeton University, …, 1993
B Caplan - 1996 - econfaculty.gmu.edu
Abstract Bernanke-Carey (1994) developed and tested a model of wage adjustment and
aggregate supply for the international Great Depression. The present paper applies their
model to the other severe pre-war depression, namely the depression of 1920-21. Despite ...
B Caplan - Public Choice, 2007 - Springer
Beyond Conventional Economics is a diverse collection of eight essays written in honor of
public choice legend Geoffrey Brennan. Each chapter is written by one or more of his many
co-authors. Like Brennan himself, the contributors cover everything from moral philosophy ...
B Caplan… - Public Choice, 2011 - Springer
Abstract Previous research suggests that positive and normative beliefs about economics
are largely unrelated. Using questions from two national surveys, this study finds that:(a) the
underlying determinants of positive and normative beliefs are strikingly similar;(b) ...
B Caplan - Critical Review, 2008 - Taylor & Francis
ABSTRACT This symposium's objections to my book fall into two main categories:
philosophical and empirical. The philosophical objections are largely sophistical. If we took
them seriously, they would invalidate far more than my book: We would also have to give ...
B Caplan - econfaculty.gmu.edu
Abstract: The calculation literature primarily focuses on whether economic calculation is
impossible under socialism. But this looses sight of the most interesting Austrian claim: The
absence of calculation makes socialism itself impossible. The current paper critically ...
B Caplan - econfaculty.gmu.edu
Abstract: Timothy Besley's Principled Agents? carefully surveys the modern social science
literature on political agency problems, and tries to chart a sensible middle course between
the naive assumption that politicians maximize the public welfare and the pessimism of ...
B Caplan - Constitutional Political Economy, 2007 - Springer
Government Failure versus Market Failure is a remarkable little book. In it, Clifford Winston
aggregates the lessons of dozens of scholarly empirical literatures on the efficiency of
regulation, yet reaches an easy-to-summarize conclusion: regulation fails the cost-benefit ...
B Caplan, E Stringham… - pubchoicesoc.org
Abstract: Political scientists and economists recognize that there is strong pubic desire for
reducing taxation and/or the federal deficit in the United States. However, there is also
strong public support for maintaining or even increasing the level of spending. One ...
B Caplan - Introductory Chapters, 2007 - ideas.repec.org
The greatest obstacle to sound economic policy is not entrenched special interests or
rampant lobbying, but the popular misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and personal biases
held by ordinary voters. This is economist Bryan Caplan's sobering assessment in this ...
B Caplan - The Economic Journal, 2002 - res.org.uk
Differences between the general public's positive economic views and economists'
resemble other judgemental anomalies: Laypeople and experts systematically disagree. I
analyse this puzzle using data from the Survey of Americans and Economists on the ...
[CITATION] End It, Don't Mend It: What to Do with No Child Left Behind by Neal
B Caplan - Policy, 2007
B Caplan - 2005 - Taylor & Francis
Abstract This has been an unusually productive exchange. My critics largely accept my main
theoretical claims about economic calculation and socialism. They have also started to do
what advocates of the Misesian view should have been doing for decades: offer empirical ...
B Caplan - Journal of Economics, 2006 - Springer
For instance, in order to obtain their results the Authors use a speci- fication in which factor prices
are not variable; though this hypothesis is necessary in order to have analytical tractability (the
alternative – ex- plored by the Authors themselves in a previous paper – being numerical ...
B Caplan - 2011 - books.google.com
We've needlessly turned parenting into an unpleasant chore. Parents invest more time and
money in their kids than ever, but the shocking lesson of twin and adoption research is that
upbringing is much less important than genetics in the long run. These revelations have ...
L Boland, D Bruce, K Button, B Caplan… - Scholarly Comments on …, 2008 - socionet.ru
I am grateful to the co-editors Bruce Benson, Fred Foldvary, George Selgin, and Larry White
and the managing editor Kevin Rollins for all their fine work, to Warren Gibson for many
reports on math-intensive papers, to donors for support, and to readers for their interest ...
[CITATION] Do You Know the Way to LA? San Jose Shows How to Turn an Urban Area into Los Angeles in Three Stressful Decades by Randal O'Toole
B Caplan - Policy, 2007
[CITATION] STUDIES IN THE POLICY ANALYSIS SERIES
B Caplan - Policy, 2007
B Caplan - Journal of Cultural Economics, 1998 - Springer
The Twisted Muse is at once an analysis of Nazi cultural theory and policy, a case study of
interwar labor markets, and a history of a neglected turning point in classical music. Kater
realizes impressive economies of scope by addressing all three topics in a single volume, ...
S Ackroyd, V Aggarwal, M Altman… - Journal of …, 2010 - Cambridge Univ Press
Journal of Institutional Economics (2010), 6: 4, 569–570 C o The JOIE Foundation 2010
doi:10.1017/S1744137410000317 ... The editors would like to thank the following who have
acted as referees in the year up to June 2010: ... Stephen Ackroyd Vikas Aggarwal Morris ...
B Caplan - INDEPENDENT REVIEW-OAKLAND-, 2000 - econfaculty.gmu.edu
Continuing revelations about Joseph Stalin's reign have led many historians to rank him the
greatest mass murderer of our century and possibly of all time. But a growing body of
evidence indicates that they are probably mistaken: Mao Zedong, the dictator of ...
[CITATION] Center for the Study of Public Choice George Mason University, USA
B CAPLAN - Journal of cultural economics, 1998 - Association for Cultural Economics
[CITATION] LIST OF REVIEWERS FOR VOL. 11
D Aadland, M Aarstol, LF Ackert, A Akhigbe… - International Review of …, 2002
Abstract We develop a critique of the single-tax proposal of Henry George. We present a
simple search-theoretic model for the discovery of natural resources and show that a tax on
the unimproved value of land is distortionary. We then consider the time inconsistency and ...
M Abolafia, B Amable, A Amin… - Journal of …, 2006 - Cambridge Univ Press
Journal of Institutional Economics (2006), 2: 3, 385–387 Printed in the United Kingdom C o The
JOIE Foundation 2006 doi:10.1017/S1744137406000464 ... The editors would like to thank
the following who have acted as referees in the year up to April 2006:
[CITATION] Medicaid's Soaring Cost: Time to Step on the Brakes by Jagadeesh
B Caplan - Policy, 2007
B Caplan - The Encyclopedia of Public Choice, 2003 - Springer
Most economists know from personal experience that their perspective on the economy is
unpopular. When they teach introductory students or write a basic textbook, one of their main
goals is to correct students' misconceptions. What makes this task easier is that students ...
[CITATION] The Freedom to Spend Your Own Money on Medical Care: A Common
B Caplan - Policy, 2007
Retrospective voting circumvents many of voters' cognitive limitations, but if voters'
attributional judgements are systematically biased, retrospective voting becomes an
independent source of political failure. We design and administer a new survey of the ...
B Caplan - Cato Journal, 2012 - catostore.org
Consider the following thought experiment: Moved by the plight of desperate earthquake
victims, you volunteer to work as a relief worker in Haiti. After two weeks, you're ready to go
home. Unfortunately, when you arrive at the airport, customs officials tell you that you're ...
B Caplan - gsu.edu
Externalities are probably the argument for government intervention that economists most
respect. Externalities are frequently used to justify the government's ownership of industries
with positive externalities and prohibition of products with negative externalities. ...
S Althaus, B Caplan, J Friedman, I Somin… - Critical Review, 2008 - Taylor & Francis
Ilya Somin, to my immediate left, is a visiting assistant professor of law at the University of
Pennsylvania Law School and an assistant professor of law at George Mason University. His
widely‐cited Critical Review article on “Voter Ignorance and the Democratic Ideal” helped ...
O Bover,
M Arellano, S Bentolila, WJ Ethier… - The Economic …, 2002 - res.org.uk
In this paper we study the effects of unemployment benefit duration and the business cycle
on unemployment duration. We construct durations for individuals entering unemployment
from a longitudinal sample of Spanish men in 1987–94. Estimated discrete hazard models ...
[CITATION] OTHER STUDIES IN THE POLICY ANALYSIS SERIES
B Caplan - Policy, 2007
[CITATION] Three essays on the economics of government behavior
BD Caplan - 1997 - Princeton University
B Caplan - POLICY, 2008 - 175.107.133.170
The outcome of the 2007 fed-eral election, like those of all elections before it, was decided
by people that political scientists in their franker moments call the 'know-nothings.'These are
the voters who say in surveys that they aren't much interested in politics, and prove it by ...
B Caplan - econfaculty.gmu.edu
Bastiat is arguably history's most persuasive and influential popularizer of free-market
economics. His writings explain the laissez-faire lessons of economists like Adam Smith and
Jean-Baptiste Say with clarity and humor. For example, in his" candlemakers' petition," ...
B Caplan - Public Choice, 2001 - Springer
Suppose the demand for large American cars falls due to an increase in the price of oil.
Economists will normally resist government efforts to shield car manufacturers from the
consequences of the shock. The whole point of entrepreneurship is forecasting an ...
G Becker, S Bouman, S Capital… - Scholarly Comments …, 2010 - econjwatch.org
We are immensely grateful to the American Institute for Economic Research for their
friendship and support, including a three-day EJW conference; especially the president of
AIER, Charles E. Murray, and communications director, Ryan Goodenough, and program ...
B Caplan - econfaculty.gmu.edu
Background. Most economists know from personal experience that their perspective on the
economy is unpopular. When they teach introductory students or write a basic textbook, one
of their main goals is to correct students' misconceptions. What makes this task easier is ...
B Caplan - Public Choice, 2010 - Springer
Abstract Contrary to my critics, voter irrationality does not imply that economists cannot
mitigate political failure. With rational voters, reform-minded economists have few viable
tactics; with irrational voters reformers have more options. Rational voters can be swayed ...
B Caplan - econfaculty.gmu.edu
My The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (Caplan 2007)
argues that aggregation is overrated. There turn out to be important subjects–especially
economics–where the average citizen is not merely ignorant, but systematically mistaken. ...
B Caplan - The Review of Austrian Economics, 2008 - Springer
Abstract Ludwig von Mises argues that public opinion, not the form of government, is the
ultimate determinant of policy. The implication is that, holding public opinion constant,
democracies and dictatorships will have the same policies—a result I call Mises' ...
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