A Primer on Modern Themes in Free Market Economics and Policy

Free market economics has advanced dramatically over the past thirty years, driven by the maturing of public choice theory, a resurgence of Austrian economics, and new work in law and economics and regulatory studies. This book introduces and summarizes the most important of those advances for students, academics, policy analysts, and serious readers who want a broad understanding of free market ideas.
In fifteen chapters, Dr. John M. Cobin surveys ideas and interest groups in public choice economics, capture theory and antitrust, rent seeking, the calculus of consent and vote-seeking, public choice issues for regulation, the classically liberal thought of Ludwig von Mises, Austrian methodology and the knowledge problem, entrepreneurship from an Austrian perspective, the Austrian critique of interventionism, the Austrian business cycle and free banking, market failure fiction, the economic analysis of law, cases and criticisms in law and economics with a focus on property rights, and allodialism as economic policy.
The book is purposefully eclectic, favoring no single branch of free market thought. Extensive quotations from original sources acquaint the reader with key contributors to the literature, making the volume especially useful as a textbook for upper-division or graduate courses in economics, political science, public administration, legal studies, and public policy, and for classical liberal seminar programs.
John M. Cobin, Ph. D. is a public policy economist trained at George Mason University. This second edition (2009) is published by Alertness Books. A Spanish translation, Politicas Publicas: Topicos Modernos de la Economia de Mercado para el Bienestar Social, is also available.