Public Choice, Market Failure, and Government Failure in Principles Textbooks

Rent-seeking in the classroom and textbooks: Where are we after 50 years?

“…With two exceptions, in the fifty years since the publication of Tullock (1967), rentseeking has become standard in undergraduate public economics textbooks. Fike and Gwartney (2015) show that is also true for principles textbooks, with rent-seeking covered in nearly all major principles textbooks except for a couple of outliers. 7 As the expansive title of Tullock's (1967)…”

Misperceptions about capitalism, government and inequality

“…Fike and Gwartney (2015) report that only half of the 23 most common economic principles textbooks provide any coverage of public choice topics and that the coverage of market failure is sextuple that of government failure. The economics profession must do a better job of educating students and the public about the nuanced but vital distinction between the varieties of capitalism and the important role of institutions in constraining the Hobbesian propensity of man to 'rape, pillage, and plunder' and enabling the Smithian proclivity of man to 'truck, barter, and exchange' (Boettke, 2013, p. 385).…”

Economists Have No Defense: A Critical Review of National Defense in Economics Textbooks

“…Having a sense of the absolute and relative amount of spending on national defense is crucial if students are to be informed citizens who understand the magnitude of government operations. 6 For thorough analyses of the degree of public choice and government failure coverage in textbooks, see Gwartney and Fike (2015) and Eyzaguirre, Ferrarini, and O'Roark (2014). We focus on the public goods concept; thus, we restrict our analysis to the contexts in which textbook authors discuss public goods rather than the extent of coverage of any one topic in terms of page counts.…”

“…Our analysis contributes to an existing literature that analyzes the treatment of economic concepts in undergraduate textbooks (Kent 1989;Kent and Rushing 1999;Pyne 2007;Hill and Myatt 2007;Madsen 2013;Gwartney and Shaw 2013;Eyzaguirre, Ferrarini, and O'Roark 2014;Gwartney and Fike 2015). Our work specifically builds upon prior studies of textbook presentations of government failure theory.…”

“…Eyzaguirre, Ferrarini, and O'Roark (2014) review 12 principles books and find limited and truncated discussions of government failure. Gwartney and Fike (2015) analyze the prevalence and nature of public choice discussions in a larger sample of 23 principles texts. They find a sizeable disparity between the coverage of market and government failure in terms of both page length and inclusion of key concepts.…”