The Rise and Decline of Nations

The determinants of off-budget activity of state and local governments

“…For example, Wagner's law (Wagner, 1893), special interest group formations (Olson, 1982), bureaucratic monopoly power (Niskanen, 1971), rent-seeking activity (Weede, 1984), fiscal illusion (Buchanan and Wagner, 1978), crises (Higgs, 1985), legislator specialization (Crain, Tollison, Goff and Carlson, 1985), extending voting franchises (Meltzer and Richards, 1983), and the demand for protection (Bordo and Landau, 1987). 2.…”

Economic effects of a conflict-prone world order

“…Although the operation of democratic governments is a matter of considerable debate, public choice theory implies that democratic governments do not maximize national welfare (Downs, 1957;Buchanan and Tullock, 1962;Mueller, 1979;and Olson, 1982). Voters have poor incentives to become well-informed and may have little recourse against entrenched or indifferent politicians and bureaucrats who do not adhere to their mandate.…”

A note on Pryor's criticism of Olson's rise and decline of nations

“…Intuitively, I could easily imagine fastgrowing economies with comparatively little rent-seeking to suffer more from frictional dislocations and fluctuations than fully developed rentseeking societies which have become too stable to tolerate innovation and Schumpeterian 'creative destruction'. In this context, however, the issue is not whether Pryor's (1984) proposition or my counterintuition makes sense (or, conceivably, neither), but whether Olson (1982Olson ( , 1983 has committed himself to Pryor's proposition on fluctuations. I don't see where he did do so.…”

“…I don't see where he did do so. If he never did, the third section of Pryor's (1984) paper has to be discarded, too, for the purpose of finding out whether Olson's (1982) theory fits with the empirical observations. The first section of Pryor's (1984) paper contains an effort to test Olson's theory.…”