Public Finance and Public Choice: Two Contrasting Visions of the State (CESifo Book Series)

Rating:
Summary: Worth reading, but avoids the underlying disagreements
Review: I had high hopes for this book; the transcript of a symposium featuring a back-and-forth dialogue of sorts by two leading thinkers in the area of public choice and finance would seem ideal, and as an introduction to the field, it was quite good. Where it fell short is in offering an analysis of the ideas on which the differences between the participants' views lay. Rather, one tended to offer his outlook on, say, the proper redistributive function of a government, or whether brakes on power are best set at the constitutional level, and the other would offer his views. So there was very little in the way of attacking the weak points of each other's arguments directly. Put simply, Buchanan does not trust people in positions of power, while Musgrave does. Buchanan's work usually involves modeling how things work, while Musgrave looks at how he thinks things should be. But there is little exploration of the basis for, for instance, Musgrave's frequent assertions that, well, things tend to be this way and we aren't happy with that so you see we need government intervention. He just goes on, and then when it is Buchanan's turn, he goes on. And the book is rather philosophical in nature; while there is a lot of economics jargon throughout, the overall level is general. It all just seemed a bit too civil. A good enough book, but perhaps a subscription to Critical Review would be a better place to look for more penetrating discussions of the topics at hand.