Economics students are often taught that government should intervene when there is market failure. But what about government failure? Should we expect government intervention to outperform market outcomes? Listen as Duke University economist Michael Munger explores the history of how economists have thought about this dilemma and possible ways to find a third or even fourth option beyond government or markets.
Welcome to Econ talk conversations for the curious part of the Library of economics and Liberty.
I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
Go to econtalk.org, where you can subscribe, comment on this episode, and find links and other information related to today's conversation.
You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done going back to 2006.
Our email address is mailcontalk.org dot.
We'd love to hear from you.
Today is May 29, 2024, and my guest is economist Michael Munger of Duke University.
This is Mike's 47th, yes, 47th appearance on Econ Talk, which is roughly once every 20 episodes or a little over twice a year.
Mike was last here in September of 2023, talking about Adam Smith and the trolley problem.
Mike, welcome back to Econ Talk.
It's a pleasure, Russ.
Thank you.
Our topic for today is government failure, based on a paper of yours co authored with William Keech.
Bill Keach was a friend of both of ours who has sadly since passed away.
Your title is a riff on an older paper about market failure.
Market failure is a term thats used frequently by economists.
I thought we might start there and talk about what market failure is and what youre trying to, how youre trying to respond to that.
Yeah.
Let me say something about how we came to this.
As you said, Bill Keach was a mutual friend of ours.