James M. Buchanan podcast

This is from Economics in Ten podcast, season five, episode three. Buchanan won the Nobel Prize for developing public choice theory: the application of economic reasoning to political decision-making. The central insight is that politicians and bureaucrats are self-interested agents just like everyone else, and we cannot assume that government intervention will correct market failures if the institutions doing the intervening are themselves subject to incentive problems. The episode covers regulatory capture, rent-seeking, and why well-intentioned policies sometimes produce bad outcomes. Directly spec-relevant for government failure topics and accessible for students who have covered market failure and government failure: Buchanan’s framework provides strong evaluative points when assessing the case for intervention.  Listen here