Tag Archives: public economy

Important. Demonstrates the need for a return to political economy" to right the balance, which has swung too far in the direction of economic liberalism.The problem is that the assumptions on which economic liberalism is based are ideological and not empirical, seeming to contradict what actually happens institutionally especially in democratic societies regarding "public goods." Economic liberalism assumes that public goods are only needed as a result of "market failure," so the solution...

More than a century ago, the effective operation of the public economy was a significant, active concern of economists. With the insurgence of market-centrism and rational choice economics, however, government was devalued, its role circumscribed and seen from a perspective of “market failure.” As Backhouse (2005) has shown, the transformation in economic thinking in the latter half of the 20th century led to a “radical shift” in worldview regarding the role of the state. The very idea of a...