Author Description

Bureaucracy and Public Economics brings together in one volume the classic book and related articles that put forward the first formal economic theory of the behavior of bureaucracies. William Niskanen has consistently argued that bureaucrats have personal objectives - that differ from those of both their political supervisors and the general public - which they further by use of their monopoly power. He develops his argument to contend that government budgets have become too large and should be curtailed. All of Professor Niskanen's major contributions to this field have been brought together in this one volume including his pioneering article on "The Peculiar Economics of Bureaucracy," the full text of the book "Bureaucracy and Representative Government" and his recent reassessment of the larger body of scholarship on the economics of bureaucracy. Scholars, students and teachers of public economics will welcome this volume that, by making some of the key contributions in the field more widely accessible, will provoke discussion, debate and further research.