Mises, Bastiat, public opinion, and public choice

Bryan Caplan () and Edward Stringham

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: 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 fails because voters' views are rational but ignored, the Mises-Bastiat view is that democracy fails because voters' views are irrational but heeded. Mises and Bastiat anticipate many of the most effective criticisms of tra4itional public choice to emerge during the last decade and point to many avenues for future research.

Keywords: Templeton Culture of Enterprise Award; economic literacy; rational ignorance; rational irrationality; biased beliefs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B53 D72 H10 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Published in Review of Political Economy 1.17(2005): pp. 79-105

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Journal Article: Mises, bastiat, public opinion, and public choice (2005)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:26084

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