Econ 309  Government Failure

Lecture Notes on Bureaucracy

For interest:  

• • Exhibit A of government failure:  European agricultural subsides.  (New York Times, Dec. 30, 2009)

  • Exhibit B of government failure:  Senator Bunning and Judicial Holds (Ezra Klein, Washington Post, Dec. 28, 2009)

  • Dilbert:  Dogbert as CEO, "We'll build a factory in every state!"  

  • Nobel Prize winner Roger Myerson reflects on our troubles with setting up a government in Iraq...and thinks that maybe some corruption isn't the worst thing.  (Myerson did most of his research while a professor at Northwestern.  This piece is insanely interesting.)

  • Why can't the US government cut out wasteful, improper payments?  (Slate, Nov. 18, 2009)

  • Uwe Reinhardt on making healthcare policy...it's like dealing with tribes in Afghanistan!

  • Let's bribe seniors...with $250 each!   (New York Times, Oct. 27, 2009)

  • 15 most Corrupt Members of Congress 

  • How Congressman Jack Murtha and many of his peers work the system.  (Center for Public Integrity, Sept. 8, 2009)

  • Friedrich A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (in comic book form)

  • Government Failure Versus Market Failure:  Microeconomic Policy Research and Government Performance, by Clifford Winston, AEI-Brookings, 2006.  (The entire book!)

  • A classic example of regulator capture:  Mattel Toys

  • "History Matters:  If you paid a $4 poll tax in 1910, your great-grandchild gets a polio vaccine today"

  • A typically brilliant paper by Avinash Dixit, "Democracy, Autocracy, and Bureaucracy" (2009)

For amusement:

• • Dilbert on Government Failure - One, Two

  • "American People Hire High-Powered Lobbyist to Push Interests in Congress", The Onion