Is there something like a Coase for democratic politics? Firm/market/law/transaction costs/social costs?
Not school civics. More like Fukuyama’s stuff or Selectorate Theory, but institutional.
I’m thinking parties, media, mobs as first-order. Maybe firms and demagogues too.
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Public choice theory feels more analogous to regular or behavioral economics than coasean though. 🤔
It offers analytical insights but doesn’t seem to suggest a natural and satisfying ontology. Something you could use in a toy-world simulation for eg.
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Replying to @vgr
Public Choice Theory is all about this.
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Hmm. Maybe a direct analogy would work
Firm = party
Market = media
Law = Overton window/pc norms etc
Social costs = fake news, disinformation that distorts media the way social costs distort prices
Transaction costs = cost of actually forming an opinion on an issue.
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Breaking down transaction costs as we normally do:
Search costs = figuring out what political issues correlate to private interests. Like realizing GDPR matters if I run a website.
Negotiating costs = cost of forming an opinion
Monitoring costs = cost of tracking the issue
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Joining a party = joining a firm
Contract = party line
Main macro thing of interest in coasean economics is not gdp or interest rates but firm size distribution. By analogy, in politics it should be faction-size distribution.
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Ah! This is promising. Acemoglu is the why nations fail guy.
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Replying to @vgr
Daron Acemoglu wrote about this a while ago dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/hand
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Never heard of Trent Macdonald, interesting.... 🧐
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Replying to @profjasonpotts @vgr and @trentjmacdonald
Indeed, @trentjmacdonald wrote a very good book on this elgaronline.com/view/978178897
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