The Oxford Handbook of Public Choice, Volume 1

The Oxford Handbook of Public Choice provides a comprehensive overview of the research in economics, political science, law, and sociology that has generated considerable insight into the politics of democratic and authoritarian systems as well as the influence of different institutional frameworks on incentives and outcomes. The result is an improved understanding of public policy, public finance, industrial organization, and macroeconomics as the combination of political and economic analysis shed light on how various interests compete both within a given rules of the games and, at times, to change the rules. These volumes include analytical surveys, syntheses, and general overviews of the many subfields of public choice focusing on interesting, important, and at times contentious issues. Throughout the focus is on enhancing understanding how political and economic systems act and interact, and how they might be improved.

Both volumes combine methodological analysis with substantive overviews of key topics. This first volume covers voting and elections; interest group competition and rent seeking, including corruption and various normative approaches to evaluating policies and politics.

Throughout both volumes important analytical concepts and tools are discussed, including their application to substantive topics. Readers will gain increased understanding of rational choice and its implications for collective action; various explanations of voting, including economic and expressive; the role of taxation and finance in government dynamics; how trust and persuasion influence political outcomes; and how revolution, coups, and authoritarianism can be explained by the same set of analytical tools as enhance understanding of the various forms of democracy.

Roger D. Congleton is the BB&T Professor of Economics at West Virginia University. He is coeditor of the journal, Constitutional Political Economy , and has publishing well over a hundred fifty articles on public choice related topics in journals and academic books.
Professor Congleton also served as president of the Public Choice Society from March 2018 through March 2020.

Bernard Grofman is the Jack W. Peltason Chair of Democracy Studies and Professor of Political Science, University of California, Irvine

Stefan Voigt is professor of Law & Economics at the University of Hamburg in Germany. He is best known for his research in constitutional political economy. Together with Roger Congleton, he is editor of the journal, Constitutional Political Economy