View the Table of Contents
Read the Introduction.

"Whether you are interested in the role of government and markets, or the role of technology in society, or in specific policy areas, "Half-Life" makes for stimulating reading. Foldvary and Klein should be commended for bringing together many disparate policy areas under one roof, and assessing the role of technology in promoting choice, freedom, and prosperity."--"Knowledge, Technology, & Policy"

""The Half-Life of Policy Rationales" is one clever book. Nothing in recent years on economics of new technology comes close."
--"The Independent Review"

"This makes for provocative and profitable reading."
-- "Markets & Morality"

"A useful volume for those interested in the rationales for regulations and other government policies."
--" Choice"

The Half-Life of Policy Rationales argues that the appropriateness of policy depends on the state of technology, and that the justifications for many public policies are dissolving as technology advances. As new detection and metering technologies are being developed for highways, parking, and auto emissions, and information becomes more accessible and user-friendly, this volume argues that quality and safety are better handled by the private sector. As for public utilities, new means of producing and delivering electricity, water, postal, and telephone services dissolve the old natural-monopolies rationales of the government.

This volume includes essays on marine resources, lighthouses, highways, parking, auto emissions, consumer product safety, money and banking, medical licensing, electricity, water delivery, postal service, community governance, and endangeredspecies. The editors have mobilized the hands-on knowledge of field experts to develop theories about technology and public policy. The Half-Life of Policy Rationales will be of interest to readers in public policy, technology, property rights, and economics.

The title of this book raises a provocative question that should make all economists think. What is our raison d'etre ? Only a few economists have specifically addressed the issue. Several of the more challenging efforts are included here. Do economists have much influence on government policy, particularly over, say, five or ten years? Is that because they don't try hard enough or is it because politicians care more about the next election than about the opinion of economists? In this splendid collection, some published as long ago as the 1930s, nine great economists consider these questions. The editor's illuminating introduction sorts out the area of agreement and disagreement between them.

Economists direct their research mainly to the technical frontiers of the discipline. But the actual decisions of political economy are made, not by experts, but by ordinary public officials and voters--the "Everyman." However, the task of educating the Everyman is neglected, sometimes even denigrated, by academic economists.

Daniel Klein has here gathered essays of 9 great economists of this century--Friedrich Hayek, Ronald Coase, Thomas Schelling, Gordon Tullock, Israel Kirzner, Frank Graham, William Hutt, Clarence Philbrook, and D. McCloskey--addressing the existential issue for economists: "How do we contribute to human betterment?"

The authors express their esteem for economic research firmly rooted in public issues and that contributes to public discourse. Some suggest that the academic focus on technical refinement not only diverts economists from efforts at public edification, but might even mislead economists in their own understanding of economic affairs.

Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek saw the liberty principle as focal and accorded it strong presumption. But their wisdom invokes how little we can know. In Knowledge and Coordination, Daniel Klein re-examines the elements of economic liberalism. He interprets Hayek's notion of spontaneous order from the aestheticized perspective of a Smithian spectator, real or imagined. Klein addresses issues economists have had surrounding the notion of coordination by distinguishing the concatenate coordination of Hayek, Ronald Coase, and Michael Polanyi from the mutual coordination of Thomas Schelling and game theory. Clarifying the meaning of cooperation, he resolves debates over whether entrepreneurial innovation enhances or upsets coordination, and thus interprets entrepreneurship in terms of discovery, or new knowledge. Beyond information, knowledge entails interpretation and judgment, emergent from tacit reaches of the "society of mind," itself embedded in actual society. Rejecting homo economicus in favor of the "deepself," Klein offers a distinctive formulation of knowledge economics, entailing asymmetric interpretation, judgment, entrepreneurship, error, and correction-and kinds of discovery-which all serve the cause of liberty. This richness of knowledge joins agent and analyst, and meaningful theory depends on tacit affinities between the two. Knowledge and Coordination highlights the recurring connections to underlying purposes and sensibilities, of analysts as well as agents. Behind economic talk of market communication and social error and correction lies Klein's Smithian allegory, with the allegorical spectator representing a conception of the social. Knowledge and Coordination instructs us to declare such allegory. Knowledge and Coordination is an authoritative take on how, by confessing the looseness of its judgments and the by-and-large status of its claims, laissez-faire liberalism makes its economic doctrines more robust and its presumption of liberty more viable.

Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek saw the liberty principle as focal and accorded it strong presumption, but their wisdom invokes how little we can know. In Knowledge and Coordination, Daniel Klein re-examines the elements of economic liberalism. He interprets Hayek's notion of spontaneous order from the aestheticized perspective of a Smithian spectator, real or imagined. Klein addresses issues economists have had surrounding the notion of coordination by distinguishing the concatenate coordination of Hayek, Ronald Coase, and Michael Polanyi from the mutual coordination of Thomas Schelling and game theory. Clarifying the meaning of cooperation, he resolves debates over whether entrepreneurial innovation enhances or upsets coordination, and thus interprets entrepreneurship in terms of discovery or new knowledge. Beyond information, knowledge entails interpretation and judgment, emergent from tacit reaches of the "society of mind," itself embedded in actual society. Rejecting homo economicus in favor of the "deepself," Klein offers a distinctive formulation of knowledge economics, entailing asymmetric interpretation, judgment, entrepreneurship, error, and correction-and kinds of discovery-which all serve the cause of liberty. This richness of knowledge joins agent and analyst, and meaningful theory depends on tacit affinities between the two. Knowledge and Coordination highlights the recurring connections to underlying purposes and sensibilities, of analysts as well as agents. Behind economic talk of market communication and social error and correction lies Klein's Smithian allegory, with the allegorical spectator representing a conception of the social. Knowledge and Coordination instructs us to declare such allegory. Knowledge and Coordination is an authoritative take on how, by confessing the looseness of its judgments and the by-and-large status of its claims, laissez-faire liberalism makes its economic doctrines more robust and its presumption of liberty more viable.

View the Table of Contents
Read the Introduction.

"Whether you are interested in the role of government and markets, or the role of technology in society, or in specific policy areas, "Half-Life" makes for stimulating reading. Foldvary and Klein should be commended for bringing together many disparate policy areas under one roof, and assessing the role of technology in promoting choice, freedom, and prosperity."--"Knowledge, Technology, & Policy"

""The Half-Life of Policy Rationales" is one clever book. Nothing in recent years on economics of new technology comes close."
--"The Independent Review"

"This makes for provocative and profitable reading."
-- "Markets & Morality"

"A useful volume for those interested in the rationales for regulations and other government policies."
--" Choice"

The Half-Life of Policy Rationales argues that the appropriateness of policy depends on the state of technology, and that the justifications for many public policies are dissolving as technology advances. As new detection and metering technologies are being developed for highways, parking, and auto emissions, and information becomes more accessible and user-friendly, this volume argues that quality and safety are better handled by the private sector. As for public utilities, new means of producing and delivering electricity, water, postal, and telephone services dissolve the old natural-monopolies rationales of the government.

This volume includes essays on marine resources, lighthouses, highways, parking, auto emissions, consumer product safety, money and banking, medical licensing, electricity, water delivery, postal service, community governance, and endangeredspecies. The editors have mobilized the hands-on knowledge of field experts to develop theories about technology and public policy. The Half-Life of Policy Rationales will be of interest to readers in public policy, technology, property rights, and economics.

The title of this book raises a provocative question that should make all economists think. What is our raison d'etre ? Only a few economists have specifically addressed the issue. Several of the more challenging efforts are included here. Do economists have much influence on government policy, particularly over, say, five or ten years? Is that because they don't try hard enough or is it because politicians care more about the next election than about the opinion of economists? In this splendid collection, some published as long ago as the 1930s, nine great economists consider these questions. The editor's illuminating introduction sorts out the area of agreement and disagreement between them.

Transit services in the United States are in trouble. Ridership has dwindled, productivity has declined, and operating deficits have widened. The traditional approaches to running transit systems--government planning or operation of bus and rail services, government subsidization of private operations, heavy regulation of all transit modes--have failed, and there is little hope of their ever succeeding under current practices. But public transportation cannot simply be abandoned. Can it, then, be made more self-supporting and efficient? The authors of this book say it's time to rethink the fundamental structure of transit policy. The book focuses on street-based transit--buses, shuttles, and jitneys. (While street-based transit in the U.S. today usually means bus service, in other times and places streets have also been served by smaller vehicles called jitneys that follow a route but not a schedule.) The authors examine a variety of transit services: jitney services from America's past, illegal jitneys today, airport shuttle van services, bus deregulation in Great Britain, and jitney services in less developed countries. The authors propose that urban transit be brought into the fold of market activity by establishing property rights not only in vehicles, but also in curb zones and transit stops. Market competition and entrepreneurship would depend on a foundation of what they call " curb rights." By creating exclusive and transferable curb rights (to bus stops and other pickup points) leased by auction, the authors contend that American cities can have the best of both kinds of markets--scheduled (and unsubsidized) bus service and unscheduled but faster and more flexiblejitneys. They maintain that a carefully planned transit system based on property rights would rid the transit market of inefficient government production and overregulation. It would also avoid the problems of a lawless market--cutthroat competition, schedule jockeying, and even curbside conflict among rival operators. Entrepreneurs would be able to introduce ever better service, revise schedules and route structures, establish connections among transit providers, and use new pricing strategies. And travelers would find public transit more attractive than they do now. Once the system of curb rights is sensibly implemented, the authors conclude, the market process will take over. Then the invisible hand can do in transit what it does so well in other parts of the economy.