Bøger udgivet af Mercatus Center at George Mason University

Taxing "sin" is one of the oldest and most persistent forms of selective taxation. Founding Father and Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton is said to have imposed a tax on whiskey "before the ink on the US Constitution was dry." Motivated as much by a need to increase revenues as by a desire to do good, politicians often claim that "sin taxes" will fund projects that promote public health as well as curb unhealthy behavior. Yet sin taxes often represent inefficient public policy and may lead to a host of ill effects and unintended consequences that fail to improve public health and disproportionately hurt the poor. Although selective taxes are politically more popular than other forms of taxation, states that need to raise revenue can find more efficient ways to do so--such as by lowering the tax rate and broadening the tax base. Sin taxes simply don't deliver as advertised: they distort rather than curb undesirable behavior, they have unintended (and harmful) consequences, and they disproportionately hurt low-income taxpayers. And they don't improve public health.In For Your Own Good: Taxes, Paternalism, and Fiscal Discrimination in the Twenty-First Century, public budgeting and taxation experts Adam Hoffer and Todd Nesbit bring together the work of 25 scholars in the field of public choice economics to raise awareness of the consequences of selective taxation and encourage a better-informed debate over such policies. Inspired by an earlier book on selective taxation, Taxing Choice: The Predatory Politics of Fiscal Discrimination (1997), the current volume brings together case studies on selective taxation and essays about public finance and public choice, the political economy of public budgeting, fiscal federalism, and the economics of the failing "nanny state."For Your Own Good provides the thorough analysis of selective taxation needed to motivate better policy and will serve as an indispensable resource to many public choice economists and public policy experts. Instructors of undergraduate courses in public policy and public economics will find it a useful guide, as will graduate students and academics studying political economy.

A consensus has recently emerged among academics and policymakers that US copyright law has fallen out of balance. Lawmakers have responded by taking up proposals to reform the Copyright Act. But how should they proceed? This book offers a new and insightful view of copyright, marking the path toward a world less encumbered by legal restrictions and yet richer in art, music, and other expressive works. Two opposing viewpoints have driven the debate over copyright policy. One side questions copyright for the same reasons it questions all restraints on freedoms of expression, and dismisses copyright, like other forms of property, as a mere plaything of political forces. The opposing side regards copyrights as property rights that deserve-like rights in houses, cars, and other forms of property-the fullest protection of the law. Each of these viewpoints defends important truths. Both fail, however, to capture the essence of copyright. In Intellectual Privilege, Tom W. Bell reveals copyright as a statutory privilege that threatens our natural and constitutional rights. From this fresh perspective come fresh solutions to copyright's problems.

In the United States, the express purpose of regulation is, according to a 1993 executive order, to "e;protect or improve the health and safety of the public, the environment, or the well-being of the American people."e; However well intentioned, all human action carries with it the potential for secondary, sometimes negative, consequences. In the case of regulation, these consequences may cause harm-by exacerbating poverty, increasing opportunity inequality, raising prices, or reducing economic growth.The late Jerry Ellig-economist, teacher, writer-argued that before imposing regulations on individuals and their activities, policymakers must conduct the kind of economic analysis that can deliver rational regulation. This process requires asking: How significant is the problem the regulation seeks to address? What is the root cause of the problem? Are there alternative ways to address the cause, and how effective might they be? What are the benefits and costs to society of each alternative?These are the questions Ellig sought to answer-whether conducting research at the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center, serving as chief economist at the Federal Communications Commission, delivering testimony at a congressional hearing, or teaching students at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. As this memorial collection shows, improvements in the regulatory process can foster the life-enhancing innovation and dynamic competition on which future prosperity depends.