Choice, catallaxy, and just taxation: Contrasting architectonics for fiscal theorizing

Social Philosophy and Policy

Volumn 23, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 235-254

  Wagner, Richard E ^a  

^a GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33646423482     PISSN: 02650525     EISSN: 14716437     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0265052506060249     Document Type: Article

References (46)

1. In volume 2 of Law, Legislation, and Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), esp. 107-20, F. A. Hayek distinguishes between an economy and a catallaxy. An "economy" refers to some individual unit that exercises choice, whereas a "catallaxy" refers to the entire nexus of economizing units, a nexus which itself is not a choosing, economizing unit.
2. The contrast in orientations is presented in Jürgen G. Backhaus and Richard E. Wagner, "The Continental Tradition in the Theory of Public Finance: An Exercise in Mapping and Recovery," Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice, forthcoming;
3. and in Jürgen G. Backhaus and Richard E. Wagner, "From Continental Public Finance to Public Choice: Mapping Continuity," History of Political Economy 37 (2005), annual supplement.
4. For a crisp presentation of what can be done in this respect, see Joshua M. Epstein and Robert Axtell, Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science from the Bottom Up (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1996).
5. The pioneering effort within this genre is Thomas C. Schelling, Micromotives and Macrobehaviar (New York: Norton, 1978).
6. Mitchel Resnick, Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams: Explorations in Massively Parallel Microworlds (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), 68-74.
7. See, for instance, David Daiches, Peter Jones, and Jean Jones, A Hotbed of Genius: The Scottish Enlightenment, 1730-1790 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1986).
8. Knut Wicksell, "A New Principle of Just Taxation" (1896), in Richard A. Musgrave and Alan T. Peacock, eds., Classics in the Theory of Public Finance (London: Macmillan, 1958), 82.
9. F. Y. Edgeworth, "The Pure Theory of Taxation," Economic Journal 7 (1897): 46-70, 226-38, and 550-71;
10. F. P. Ramsey, "A Contribution to the Theory of Taxation," Economic Journal 37 (1927): 47-61.
11. Raghbendra Jha, Modern Public Economics (London: Routledge, 1998), xii.
12. Amilcare Puviani, Teoria della illusione finanziaria (Palermo: Sandron, 1903).
13. Puviani has not been translated into English, but he is available in German: Die Illusionen in der öffentlichen Finanzwirtschaft (Berlin: Dunker and Humblot, 1960).
14. A précis of Puviani's argument is presented in James M. Buchanan, Public Finance in Democratic Process (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967).
15. Jason Potts, The New Evolutionary Microeconomics (Hants, UK: Edward Elgar, 2000).
16. For some relevant treatments, see Charles Adams, For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization (London: Madison Books, 1993); and
17. Carolyn Webber and Aaron Wildavsky, A History of Taxation and Expenditure in the Western World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986).
18. In this particular regard, see Joel Slemrod and Jon Bakija, Taxing Ourselves; A Citizen's Guide to the Great Debate over Tax Reform (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996).
19. For an extensive survey of the classic Italian literature, see James M. Buchanan, "'La Scienza delle finanze': The Italian Tradition in Fiscal Theory," in Buchanan, Fiscal Theory and Political Economy (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1960), 24-74. For an effort to relate that literature to the public choice scholarship that has developed since Buchanan wrote,
20. see Richard E. Wagner, "Public Choice and the Diffusion of Classic Italian Public Finance," Il pensiero economico italiano 11 (2003): 271-82.
21. The tension between these two snares is expressed crisply in Attilio da Empoli, Lineamenti teorici dell'economia corporativa finanziaria (Milano: Giuffrè, 1941), 91-136.
22. Richard E. Wagner, "Some Institutional Problematics of Excess Burden Analytics," Public Finance Review 30 (2002): 531-45.
23. Richard A. Epstein, Takings: Private Property and the Power of Eminent Domain (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985).
24. For one survey of this literature, see Thomas S. McCaleb and Richard E. Wagner, "The Experimental Search for Free Riders: Some Reflections and Observations," Public Choice 47, no. 3 (1985): 479-90.
25. Richard E. Wagner, "Property, Taxation, and the Budgetary Commons," in Donald Racheter and Richard E. Wagner, eds., Politics, Taxation, and the Rule of Law: The Power to Tax in Constitutional Perspective (Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002), 33-47.
26. Vincent Ostrom, "The Water Economy and Its Organization," Natural Resources Journal 2 (1962): 55-73. For a review of Ostrom's contributions to polycentrism and the organization of self-governance,
27. see Richard E. Wagner, "Self-Governance, Polycentrism, and Federalism: Recurring Themes in Vincent Ostrom's Scholarly Oeuvre," Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 57 (June 2005): 173-88.
28. To say that they have the means of support does not imply that they turn it over voluntarily, for if they did the state would be a regular market forum and not a peculiar one.
29. Giovanni Montemartini, "Le basi fondamentali della scienza finanziaria pura," Giornale degli Economisti 11 (1900): 55-76;
30. English translation in Richard A. Musgrave and Alan T. Peacock, eds., Classics in the Theory of Public Finance (London: Macmillan, 1958), 137-51.
31. A related claim is advanced in Liam Murphy and Thomas Nagel, The Myth of Ownership (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), but Murphy and Nagel conceptualize the state as a sentient, acting creature and not as an interactive process.
32. See, for instance, the essays collected in F. A. Hayek, ed., Collectivist Economic Planning (London: Routledge, 1935).
33. For more recent but complementary treatments, see Paul Craig Roberts, Alienation and the Soviet. Economy (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1990);
34. and Peter J. Boettke, Why Perestroika Failed: The Politics and Economics of Socialist Transformation (London: Routledge, 1993).
35. Maffeo Pantaleoni, "Considerazioni sulle proprieta di un sistema di prezzi politici," Giornale degli Economisti 42 (1911): 9-29 and 11.4-33.
36. Pantaleoni's argument is treated in Richard E. Wagner, "Parasitical Political Pricing, Economic Calculation, and the Size of Government: Variations on a Theme by Maffeo Pantaleoni," Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice 15 (1997): 135-46.
37. See, for instance, Daniel B. Klein, Curb Rights: A Foundation for Free Enterprise in Urban Transit (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1997).
38. Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi, Natur und Wesen der Staaten, reprinted from the 1771 edition (Darmstadt: Scientia Verlag Aalen, 1969). Smith did not cite Justi, and it seems likely that the two formulations of tax canons were advanced independently of one another. The cameralists emerged around 1.500 in Central Europe, and were influential into the early nineteenth century. For a brief treatment, with citations to the source literature,
39. see Jürgen G. Backhaus and Richard E. Wagner, "The Cameralists: A Public Choice Perspective," Public Choice 3, no. 1 (1987): 3-20.
40. This literature is examined in Walter Hettich and Stanley L. Winer, Democratic Choice and Taxation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
41. The relevant essays are collected in Rudolf Hickel, ed., Die Finanzkrise des Steuerstnats: Beiträge zur politischen Ökonomie der Staatsfinanzen (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976). For a recent survey of fiscal sociology,
42. see Jürgen G. Backhaus, "Fiscal Sociology: What For?" in Jürgen G. Backhaus and Richard E. Wagner, eds., Handbook of Public Finance (Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004), 521-41.
43. A preliminary effort in this direction is set forth in Richard E. Wagner, "States and the Crafting of Souls: Mind, Society, and Fiscal Sociology," Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, forthcoming.
44. For an imaginative and constructive comparison of cities and hotels, see Spencer McCallum, The Art of Community (Menlo Park, CA: Institute for Humane Studies, 1970).
45. In this regard, see, for instance, Fred E. Foldvary, "Public Revenue from Land Rent," in Backhaus and Wagner, eds., Handbook of Public Finance, 165-94;
46. and the essays collected in Kenneth C. Wenzer, ed., Land-Value Taxation: The Equitable and Efficient Source of Public Finance (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1999).