Details

Subject(s)

• Finance, Public [Browse]
• Public welfare [Browse]
• State, The [Browse]
• Social policy [Browse]

Editor

• Martinez-Vazquez, Jorge [Browse]
• Winer, Stanley L., 1947- [Browse]

Summary note

• "Coercion is a fundamental and unavoidable part of our social lives. Economists, however, have not yet offered a fully integrated analysis of its role in either the private or the public economy. The essays in this book are different. Since collective choices on fiscal matters emerge from and have all the essential characteristics of social interaction, including the necessity of coercion, and because there is an older tradition of work on coercion in public finance that we can build upon, the contributors to this book focus directly on the study of coercion arising through the operation of the fiscal system. A variety of important issues concerning the evolution, measurement, and implications of coercion in public finance are addressed. These include: the emergence and persistence of coercion in the financing of structured anarchies; its role in the transition from natural states to the open access society; the measurement of coercion and its connection to the foundations of welfare analysis and to the sociology of preference formation; coercion in mechanism design problems with public goods; as constraints on optimal policy design and under alternative collective choice rules; and coercion in federal states as a solution to problems of highly divided societies. The implications for contemporary tax policy of the Wicksell-Lindahl solution, for the calculation of the incidence of the fiscal system, and for experiments with coercion in laboratory settings as a potentially productive force are also explored"-- Provided by publisher.
• "Social interaction necessarily requires limits on the freedom of individual choice. As soon as we are part of a group, different voices must be heard and compromises must be made. Major questions will inevitably arise about whether some people have more to say than others when acceptable limits to individual actions are specified, how such limits or rights are to be defined and circumscribed, and how they will be enforced once agreement on their nature is achieved. Coercion is an essential part of this process. While voluntary agreement may underlie some of the compromises achieved, coercion is a part of all widely used collective decision mechanisms. Coercion will also be involved in the enforcement of group decisions after they are made, to deal with free rider problems and other types of strategic behavior by individuals or groups who attempt to take advantage of their fellow citizens. Coercion is therefore a fundamental and unavoidable part of our social lives. For this reason, it is not surprising that philosophers and legal experts have examined its nature at length. Economists, however, have not yet offered a fully integrated analysis of its role in either the private or the public economy. Contemporary economic analysis of the public sector usually does not deal with coercion in a direct or formal manner, though a concern with it often lies below the surface, especially when contentious issues like taxation are involved. The essays in this book are different. Since collective choices on fiscal matters emerge from and have all the essential characteristics of social interaction, including the necessity of coercion, and because there is an older tradition of work on coercion"-- Provided by publisher.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Contents

• Coercion, welfare, and the study of public finance / Jorge Martinez-Vazquez and Stanley L. Winer
• The constitution of coercion : Wicksell, violence, and the ordering of society / John Joseph Wallis
• Proprietary public finance : on its emergence and evolution out of anarchy / Stergios Skaperdas
• Discussion : a spatial model of state coercion / Léonard Dudley
• Coercion, taxation, and voluntary association / Roger D. Congleton
• Kaldor-Hicks-Scitovsky coercion, Coasian bargaining, and the state / Michael C. Munger
• Discussion : a sociological perspective on coercion and social welfare / Edgar Kiser
• Non-coercion, efficiency and incentive compatibility in public goods / John O. Ledyard
• Social welfare and coercion in public finance / Stanley L. Winer, George Tridimas and Walter Hettich
• Discussion : the role of coercion in public economic theory / Robin Boadway
• Lindahl fiscal incidence and the measurement of coercion / Saloua Sehili and Jorge Martinez-Vazquez
• Discussion : state-local incidence and the Tiebout model / George R. Zodrow
• Fiscal coercion in federal systems, with special attention to highly divided societies / Giorgio Brosio
• Discussion : on coercion in divided societies / Bernard Grofman
• Cooperating to resist coercion : an experimental study / Lucy F. Ackert, Ann B. Gillette and Mark Rider
• Partial coercion, conditional cooperation, and self-commitment in voluntary contributions to public goods / Elena Cettolin and Arno Riedl
• Discussion : coercion in the lab! / Michael McKee.

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ISBN

• 9781107052789 (hardback)
• 1107052785 (hardback)
• 9781107636897 (paperback)
• 1107636892 (paperback)

LCCN

2013040676

OCLC

863100114

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