Politics, Markets, and Congressional Policy Choices

Politics, Markets, and Congressional Policy Choices argues that Congress is an integral participant in the design of market relationships. Utilizing a combination of taxes, subsidies, changes in property rights, and other means, the Congress intervenes in and alters policy ostensibly to improve market outcomes. Beginning with this recognition, VanDoren poses four interrelated and fundamental questions and seeks to provide answers to those questions, applying the results to energy markets.

• What role should the Congress play in the design of market relationships?
• What policies has Congress actually enacted to alter relations in markets, and do those policies differ from those that would improve market performance?
• If policies enacted by Congress do not improve market performance, what theories might account for the discrepancy between what Congress does and what it ought to do?
• What can be done to align Congress's performance more closely with its goals?

In the process of addressing each of these questions a number of innovative remedies evolve for the creation of more efficient and equitable market policies.

Politics, Markets, and Congressional Policy Choices will appeal to political scientists, congressional scholars, policy analysts, those interested in applied economic analysis, and political methodologists.

Praise / Awards

• "[VanDoren's] analysis is an important piece of a new literature . . . that seeks to apply formal economic theories and sophisticated statistical analysis to the behavior of governmental institutions and the policies they produce."
  —D. F. Kettl, Choice