Richard Wagner | George Mason University (original) (raw)
Richard E. Wagner has been the Holbert R. Harris Professor of Economics at George Mason University since 1988. He has published some 30 books and monographs along with some 200 papers in professional journals. Since 2010, his published book titles are Mind, Society, and Human Action (2010), Deficits, Debt, and Democracy (2012), Politics as a Peculiar Business (2016), James M. Buchanan and Liberal Political Economy (2017), Public Debt (with Giuseppe Eusepi) (2017), and Macroeconomics as Systems Theory (2020).
less
Uploads
Papers by Richard Wagner
It is common for scholars to describe institutions as "rules of the game." This description entai... more It is common for scholars to describe institutions as "rules of the game." This description entails a separation between a society and its rules. Social change thus results as societies amend their framing rules. This paper explores that common treatment of institutions as rules with a treatment wherein societies and institutions as images of one another. If there were no rules governing interactions among some set of people, you would have a mass of people but that mass would not constitute what we recognize as society. This simple distinction between institutions as rules by which a society is governed and institutions as society itself creates divergent paths for institutional theory, which this paper explores.
It is common for scholars to describe institutions as "rules of the game." This description entai... more It is common for scholars to describe institutions as "rules of the game." This description entails a separation between a society and its rules. Social change thus results as societies amend their framing rules. This paper explores that common treatment of institutions as rules with a treatment wherein societies and institutions as images of one another. If there were no rules governing interactions among some set of people, you would have a mass of people but that mass would not constitute what we recognize as society. This simple distinction between institutions as rules by which a society is governed and institutions as society itself creates divergent paths for institutional theory, which this paper explores.
Constitutional Political Economy, Jan 1, 2009
Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) is typically portrayed as a technique for promoting efficiency in gov... more Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) is typically portrayed as a technique for promoting efficiency in government. We don’t deny that CBA can be used in this manner, but instead focus on a different property of CBA, namely, its evolution from scholarly musings into a framing institution within which budgetary processes operate. The evolution of CBA into institutional status, moreover, shows the value of bringing a polyarchical perspective to bear on fiscal organization, wherein budgetary outcomes emerge through structured interaction among participants. CBA is a product of interaction within a political ecology, as distinct from being the product of some person’s optimizing choice.
It is common for scholars to describe institutions as "rules of the game." This description entai... more It is common for scholars to describe institutions as "rules of the game." This description entails a separation between a society and its rules. Social change thus results as societies amend their framing rules. This paper explores that common treatment of institutions as rules with a treatment wherein societies and institutions as images of one another. If there were no rules governing interactions among some set of people, you would have a mass of people but that mass would not constitute what we recognize as society. This simple distinction between institutions as rules by which a society is governed and institutions as society itself creates divergent paths for institutional theory, which this paper explores.
It is common for scholars to describe institutions as "rules of the game." This description entai... more It is common for scholars to describe institutions as "rules of the game." This description entails a separation between a society and its rules. Social change thus results as societies amend their framing rules. This paper explores that common treatment of institutions as rules with a treatment wherein societies and institutions as images of one another. If there were no rules governing interactions among some set of people, you would have a mass of people but that mass would not constitute what we recognize as society. This simple distinction between institutions as rules by which a society is governed and institutions as society itself creates divergent paths for institutional theory, which this paper explores.
Constitutional Political Economy, Jan 1, 2009
Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) is typically portrayed as a technique for promoting efficiency in gov... more Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) is typically portrayed as a technique for promoting efficiency in government. We don’t deny that CBA can be used in this manner, but instead focus on a different property of CBA, namely, its evolution from scholarly musings into a framing institution within which budgetary processes operate. The evolution of CBA into institutional status, moreover, shows the value of bringing a polyarchical perspective to bear on fiscal organization, wherein budgetary outcomes emerge through structured interaction among participants. CBA is a product of interaction within a political ecology, as distinct from being the product of some person’s optimizing choice.