Complex externalities, pandemics, and public choice

Complex externalities: introduction to the special issue

“…Carson concludes that the standard economic thinking that governmental effort is more cost-effective in dealing with public health externalities is built on unexamined and faulty assumptions about transaction costs and state capacity. Murtazashvili and Zhou (2023) argue that public choice scholarship provides a robust foundation for what the authors call a 'liberal political economy of pandemics.' They challenge the conventional wisdom that the complexity of pandemic externalities justifies a centralized government response and the suppression of economic freedom.…”