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ECONOMIC REGULATION IN MERCANTILE EENGLAND: HECKSCHER REVISITED
Author(s) -
Ekelund Robert B.,
Tollison Robert D.
Publication year - 1980
Publication title -
economic inquiry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.823
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1465-7295
pISSN - 0095-2583
DOI - 10.1111/j.1465-7295.1980.tb01223.x
Subject(s) - economics , interpretation (philosophy) , rent seeking , economic rent , competition (biology) , government (linguistics) , neoclassical economics , limited government , adam smith , market economy , political economy , public economics , law , political science , politics , ecology , linguistics , philosophy , computer science , biology , programming language
The gradual evolution to free enterprise in England, which became quite pronounced about the time of Adam Smith, is explained in this paper in terms of institutional changes in the rent‐seeking society of mercantile England. In this explanation the role of ideas and influential writers is seen as subsidiary to the role of real economic and institutional forces in producing historical outcomes. Moreover, a major feature of our rent‐seeking interpretation is that the poor design and competition for control of the mercantile regulatory process unintentionally helped bring about the institutional changes which made rent seeking and economic regulation by the central government less feasible. “a part of that force which always intends evil 4und always creates good”— Goethe, Faust.