Resources

Listed below are selected readings about spending and the deficit, and if you really want to dive in, a lengthy list of relevant Policy Studies, Articles, Books, and other Resource Links. The listing of Books is broken down by area of spending and topic.

In order to accurately project and personalize the cost of federal government expenditures, the economists behind the Government Cost Calculator used a variety of data sources and assumptions in creating the estimates. The Methodology and Sources page on MyGovCost.org explains more about the assumptions and source data that we used to build the Calculator.

Featured Readings:

Buchanan, James M., and Richard E. Wagner. 1977. Democracy in Deficit: The Political Legacy of Lord Keynes. New York: Academic Press.

Higgs, Robert. 1999. How War Amplified Federal Power in the Twentieth Century. The Freeman (July).

Lee, Dwight R., and Richard K. Vedder. 1992. Friedman Tax Cuts vs. Buchanan Deficit Reduction as the Best Way of Constraining Government. Economic Inquiry 30, no. 4 (October): 722–32.

Muris, Timothy J. 2000. Ronald Reagan and the Rise of Large Deficits: What Really Happened in 1981. The Independent Review 7, no. 3 (winter): 365–376.

Primo, David M. 2010. Make Budget Rules Bite. Arlington, VA: Mercatus Center, George Mason University.

Vedder, Richard, Lowell Gallaway, and Christopher Frenze. 1987. Federal Tax Increases and the Budget Deficit, 1947–1986: Some Empirical Evidence. Joint Economic Committee, U.S. Congress.

Policy Studies:

Baron, Jonathan, and Edward J. McCaffrey. 2006. Starving the Beast: The Psychology of Budget Deficits. Los Angeles: Center for the Study of Law and Politics, University of Southern California Law School, and California Institute of Technology.

Congressional Budget Office. 1987. The Relationship Between Federal Taxes and Spending: An Examination of Recent Research. Tax Analysis Division, July.

De Rugy, Veronique, and Melinda Warren. 2009. Expansion of Regulatory Budgets and Staffing Continues in the New Administration: An Analysis of the U.S. Budget for Fiscal Years 2009 and 2010: Fiscal Year 2010 Annual Report. Arlington, VA: Mercatus Center, George Mason University; St. Louis, Mo.: Weidenbaum Center, Washington University.

Garrett, Thomas A., and Russell M. Rhine. 2006. On the Size and Growth of Government. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Review 88: 13–30.

Schick, Allen. 2002. The Deficit That Didn’t Just Happen: A Sober Perspective on the Budget. Brookings Review 20, no. 2 (spring): 45–48.

Tempalski, Jerry. 2003. Revenue Effects of Major Tax Bills. Office of Tax Analysis Working Paper no. 81. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Treasury Department, July.

Articles:

Abrams, Burton A., and William R. Dougan. 1986. The Effects of Constitutional Restraints on Government Spending. Public Choice 49, no. 2 (May): 101–16.

Ahiakpor, James C. W., and Saleh Amirkhalkhali. 1989. On the Difficulty of Eliminating Deficits with Higher Taxes: Some Canadian Evidence. Southern Economic Journal 56, no. 1 (July): 24–31.

Anderson, William, Myles S. Wallace, and John T. Warner. 1986. Government Spending and Taxation: What Causes What? Southern Economic Journal 52, no. 3 (January) 630–39.

Bartlett, Bruce. 2007. “Starve the Beast”: Origins and Development of a Budgetary Metaphor. The Independent Review 12, no. 1 (Summer): 5–26.

Blackley, Paul R. 1986. Causality Between Revenues and Expenditures and the Size of the Federal Budget. Public Finance Quarterly 14, no. 2 (April): 139–56.

Bohn, Henning. 1991. Budget Balance Through Revenue or Spending Adjustments? Journal of Monetary Economics 27, no. 3 (June): 333–59.

Brennan, Geoffrey, and James M. Buchanan. 1997. Towards a Tax Constitution for Leviathan. Journal of Public Economics 8, no. 3 (December): 255–73.

Browning, Edgar. 2008. The Anatomy of Social Security and Medicare. The Independent Review 13:1 (Summer): 5–27.

Brubaker, Earl R. 1997. The Tragedy of the Budgetary Commons.The Independent Review 1:3 (Winter): 353–370.

Calomiris, Charles W., and Kevin A. Hassett. 2002. Marginal Tax Rate Cuts and the Public Tax Debate. National Tax Journal 55, no. 1 (March): 119–31.

Furstenberg, George M. von, R. Jeffrey Green, and Jin-Ho Jeong. 1985. Have Taxes Led Government Expenditures? The United States as a Test Case. Journal of Public Policy 5, no. 3 (August): 321–48.

Higgs, Robert. 1994. The Cold War Economy: Opportunity Costs, Ideology, and the Politics of Crisis. Explorations in Economic History (Summer).

———. 1988. Crisis and Quasi-Corporatist Policy-Making: The U.S. Case in Historical Perspective. The World & I (November 1).

———. 1985. Crisis, Bigger Government, and Ideological Change: Two Hypotheses on the Ratchet Phenomenon. Explorations in Economic History (Winter).

———. 1991. Eighteen Problematic Propositions in the Analysis of the Growth of Government. Review of Austrian Economics 5, no. 1: 3–40.

———. 2006. Fear: The Foundation of Every Government’s Power. The Independent Review 10, no. 3 (Winter): 447–466.———. 2004.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Conventional Measures of the Growth of Government.The Independent Review 9, no. 1 (Summer): 147–153.

———. 2007. Military-Economic Fascism: How Business Corrupts Government, and Vice Versa.The Independent Review 12, no. 2 (Fall): 299–316.

———. 2008. Military Spending/Gross Domestic Product = Nonsense for Budget Policymaking.The Independent Review 13, no. 1 (Summer): 147–149.

———. 2010. Recession and Recovery: Six Fundamental Errors of the Current Orthodoxy. The Independent Review 14, no. 3 (Winter): 465–472.

———. 1997. Regime Uncertainty: Why the Great Depression Lasted So Long and Why Prosperity Resumed after the War.The Independent Review 1, no. 4 (Spring): 561–590.

———. 2009. A Revealing Window on the U.S. Economy in Depression and War: Hours Worked, 1929-1950. The Independent Review 14, no. 1 (Summer): 151–160.

———. 1996. War and Leviathan in Twentieth-Century America: Conscription as the Keystone. In The Costs of War: America’s Pyrrhic Victories, edited by John V. Denson. Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Holcombe, Randall G., and Jeffrey A. Mills. 1994. Is Revenue-Neutral Tax Reform Revenue Neutral? Public Finance Quarterly 22, no. 1 (January): 65–85.

Hoover, Kevin D., and Steven M. Sheffrin. 1992. Causation, Spending, and Taxes: Sand in the Sandbox or Tax Collector for the Welfare State? American Economic Review 82, no. 1 (March): 225–48.

Joulfaian, David, and Rajen Mookerjee. 1990. The Government Revenue-Expenditure Nexus: Evidence from a State. Public Finance Quarterly 18, no. 1 (January): 92–103.

Kotlikoff, Laurence. 2000. Privatizing Social Security the Right Way. The Independent Review 5, no. 1 (Summer): 55–63.

Lipford, Jody W. 2001. How Transparent Is the U.S. Budget? The Independent Review 5, no. 4 (Spring): 575–591.

———. 1999. Twenty Years after Humphrey-Hawkins: An Assessment of Fiscal Policy.The Independent Review 4, no. 1 (Summer): 41–62.

Manage, Neela, and Michael L. Marlow. 1986. The Causal Relation Between Federal Expenditures and Receipts. Southern Economic Journal 52, no. 3 (January): 617–29.

Marlow, Michael, and Neela Manage. 1987. Expenditures and Receipts: Testing for Causality in State and Local Government Finances. Public Choice 53, no. 3 (June): 243–55.

Marlow, Michael L., and William Orzechowski. 1988. Controlling Leviathan Through Tax Reduction. Public Choice 58, no. 3 (September): 237–45.

Montanye, James A. 2003. On Rent Thinking and the Corruption of Republican Government. The Independent Review 7, no. 4 (Spring): 519–535.

Ram, Rati. 1988. Additional Evidence on Causality Between Government Revenue and Government Expenditure. Southern Economic Journal 54, no. 3 (January): 763–69.

Tasic, Slavisa. 2010. The Modern Growth of Government Springs More from Ideas than from Vested Interests. The Independent Review 14, no. 4 (Spring): 549–68.

Tullock, Gordon. 1971. The Cost of Transfers. Kyklos, 24, pp. 629–43.

Books:

Crime Control and Safety:

Benson, Bruce L. 2010. The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State. Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute.

———. 1998. To Serve and Protect: Privatization and Community in Criminal Justice. New York: New York University Press for The Independent Institute.

Hakim, Simon and Erwin A. Blackstone. 1996. Police Services: The Private Challenge. Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute.

Lopéz, Edward J., ed. The Pursuit of Justice: Law and the Economics of Legal Institutions. New York: Palgrave Macmillan for The Independent Institute.

Lott, John R., Jr. 2010. More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws, 3rd Edition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Tabarrok, Alexander T., ed. 2003. Changing the Guard: Private Prisons and the Control of Crime. Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute.

Defense:

Coyne, Christopher. 2007. After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.

Coyne, Christopher and Rachel L. Mathers, eds. 2010. Handbook on the Political Economy of War. Northampton, Mass.: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Eland, Ivan. 2004. The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed. Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute.

Ferguson, Niall. 2007. The War of the World: Twentieth Century Conflict and the Descent of the West. New York: Penguin.

Fitzgerald, A. Ernest. 1989. The Pentagonists: An Insider’s View of Waste, Mismanagement and Fraud in Defense Spending. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Goodwin, Jacob. 1985. Brotherhood of Arms: General Dynamics and the Business of Defending America. New York: Times Books.

Hayek, F. A. 1997. Socialism and War: Essays, Documents, Reviews, ed. by Bruce Caldwell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Henderson, David R. 2007. Do We Need to Go to War for Oil?. Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute.

Higgs, Robert, ed. 1990. Arms, Politics, and the Economy: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. New York: Holmes and Meier for The Independent Institute.

Isenberg, David. 2007. Budgeting for Empire: The Effect of Iraq and Afghanistan on Military Forces, Budgets, and Plans. Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute.

Moore, Mike. 2008. Twilight War: The Folly of U.S. Space Dominance. Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute.

Porter, Bruce. 1994. War and the Rise of the State: The Military Foundations of Modern Politics. New York: Free Press.

Sandler, Todd and Keith Hartley, eds. 2007. Handbook of Defense Economics: Defense in a Globalized World. New York: North Holland.

Taylor, Eric R. 2005. The Government’s Response to Terrorism. Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute.

Wheeler, Winslow T. 2006. Congress, the Defense Budget, and Pork: A Snout-to-Tail Description of Congress’ Foremost Concern in National Security Legislation. Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute.

Economic Growth:

Collier, Paul. 2008. The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries are Failing and What Can Be Done About It. New York: Oxford University Press.

Gwartney, James D., Richard L. Stroup, and Dwight R. Lee. 2005. Common Sense Economics: What Everyone Should Know about Wealth and Prosperity. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Landes, William S. 1998. The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some Are So Rich and Some So Poor. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.

Lewis, William W. 2005. The Power of Productivity: Wealth, Poverty, and the Threat to Global Stability. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Mokyr, Joel. 2010. The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

Olson, Mancur. 1984. The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

Powell, Benjamin, ed. 2007. Making Poor Nations Rich: Entrepreneurship and the Process of Economic Development. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press for The Independent Institute.

Rosenberg, Nathan and L. E. Birdzell, Jr. 1985. How the West Grew Rich: The Economic Transformation of the Industrial World. New York: Basic Books.

Sowell, Thomas. 2000. Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy. New York: Basic Books.

Vargas Llosa, Alvaro, ed. 2008. Lessons from the Poor: Triumph of the Entrepreneurial Spirit. Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute.

Weil, David N. 2008. Economic Growth. New York: Addison Wesley.

Education:

Amacher, Ryan C. and Roger E. Meiners. 2004. Faulty Towers: Tenure and the Structure of Higher Education. Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute.

Coulson, Andrew J. 1999. Market Education: The Unknown History. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers.

Hall, Joshua C., ed. 2010. Doing More with Less: Making Colleges Work Better. Secaucus, N.J.: Springer.

Merrifield, John D. 2002. School Choices: True and False. Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute.

Sommer, John W., ed. 1995. The Academy in Crisis: The Political Economy of Higher Education. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers for The Independent Institute.

Sowell, Thomas. 2003. Inside American Education. New York: Free Press.

Tooley, James. 2005. Reclaiming Education. New York: Continuum.

Vedder, Richard K. 2000. Can Teachers Own Their Own Schools? New Strategies for Educational Excellence. Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute.

———. 2004. Going Broke by Degree: Why College Costs Too Much. Washington, D.C.: AEI Press.

West, E. G. 1994. Education and the State: A Study in Political Economy. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.

Environment:

Anderson, Terry L. and Donald R. Leal. 2001. Free Market Environmentalism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Beckerman, Wilfred. 2002. A Poverty of Reason: Sustainable Development and Economic Growth. Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute.

Higgs, Robert and Carl P. Close, eds. 2005. Re-Thinking Green: Alternatives to Environmental Bureaucracy. Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute.

Kleit, Andrew N., ed. 2007. Electric Choices: Deregulation and the Future of Electric Power. Lanham. MD: Rowman and Littlefield for The Independent Institute.

Lehrer, Eli. 2009. Watery Marauders: How the Federal Government Obstructed the Development of Private Flood Insurance. Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute.

Nelson, Robert H. 2000. A Burning Issue: A Case for Abolishing the U.S. Forest Service. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Pasour, Jr., E.C. and Randal R. Rucker. 2005. Plowshares & Pork Barrels: The Political Economy of Agriculture. Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute.

Stroup, Richard L. and Roger E. Meiners, eds. 2000. Cutting Green Tape: Toxic Pollutants, Environmental Regulation and the Law. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers for The Independent Institute.

Government Growth and Spending:

Bennett, James T., and Manuel H. Johnston. 1980. The Political Economy of Federal Government Growth: 1959-1978. College Station, Texas: Center for Education and Research in Free Enterprise.

Best, Gary Dean. 1991. Pride, Prejudice and Politics: Roosevelt versus Recovery, 1933-1938. New York: Praeger.

Brooks, Arthur C. 2010. The Battle: How the Fight between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America’s Future. New York: Basic Books.

Buchanan, James M. 1987. Public Finance in Democratic Process: Fiscal Institutions and Individual Choice. Ann Arbor, MI: University of N. Carolina Press.

Buchanan, James M., and Gordon Tullock. 1965. Calculus of Consent: Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Caplan, Bryan. 2007. The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Couch, Jim, and William F. Shughart II. 1998. The Political Economy of the New Deal. Northampton, Mass.: Edward Elgar Publishing.

De Jouvenel, Bertrand. 1993. On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund.

Fishback, Price V., ed. 2007. Government and the American Economy: A New History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Folsom, Jr., Burton W. 2009. New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America. New York: Threshold Editions.

Higgs, Robert. 1987. Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government. New York: Oxford University Press.

———. 2006. Depression, War, and Cold War: Challenging Myths of Prosperity and Conflict. Oakland, CA: The Independent Institute.

———. 2007. Neither Liberty Nor Safety: Fear, Ideology, and the Growth of Government. Oakland, CA: The Independent Institute.

Hoff, Trygve J. B. 1981. Economic Calculation in the Socialist Society. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Press.

Holcombe, Randall G. 2002. From Liberty to Democracy: The Transformation of American Government. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press.

Hughes, Jonathan R. T. 1991. The Governmental Habit Redux: Economic Controls from Colonial Times to the Present. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Kennedy, Paul. 1989. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000. New York: Vintage Books.

McChesney, Fred S. 1997. Money for Nothing: Politicians, Rent Extraction, and Political Extortion. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Mises, Ludwig von. 1983. The Causes of the Economic Crisis: And Other Essays Before and After the Great Depression. New York: New York University Press.

———. 1981 [1922]. Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.

Mueller, Dennis C. 2003. Public Choice III. New York: Cambridge University Press.

North, Douglass C. 1981. Structure and Change in Economic History. New York: Norton.

Powell, Jim. 2004. FDR’s Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression. New York: Three Rivers Press.

Savage, James D. 1988. Balanced Budgets and American Politics. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.

Shlaes, Amity. 2007. The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. New York: HarperCollins.

Twight, Charlotte A. 2002. Dependent on D.C.: The Rise of Federal Control over the Lives of Ordinary Americans. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Vedder, Richard, and Lowell Gallaway. 1997. Out of Work: Unemployment and Government in Twentieth-Century America, Rev. Ed. New York: New York University Press for The Independent Institute.

Health Care:

Battistella, Roger M. 2008. Health Care Turning Point: Why Single Payer Won’t Work. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Brownlee, Shannon. 2008. Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer. New York: Bloomsbury USA.

Feldman, Roger D., ed. 2000. American Health Care: Government, Market Processes and the Public Interest. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers for The Independent Institute.

Gratzer, David. 2008. The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care. New York: Encounter Books.

Hamowy, Ronald. 2010. Failure to Provide: Healthcare at the Veterans Administration. Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute.

———. 2010. Medical Disasters and the Growth of the FDA. Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute.

Herzlinger, Regina. 1999. Market-driven Health Care: Who Wins, Who Loses in the Transformation of America’s Largest Service Industry. New York: Basic Books.

———. 2007. Who Killed Health Care? America’s $2 Trillion Medical Problem–and the Consumer-Driven Cure. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Higgs, Robert, ed. 1995. Hazardous To Our Health?: FDA Regulation of Health Care Products. Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute.

Kling, Arnold. 2008. Crisis of Abundance: Rethinking How We Pay for Health Care. Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute.

Housing:

Benson, Bruce L., ed. 2010. Property Rights: Eminent Domain and Regulatory Takings Re-Examined. New York: Palgrave Macmillan for The Independent Institute.

Holcombe, Randall G. and Benjamin Powell, eds. 2009. Housing America: Building Out of a Crisis. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers for The Independent Institute.

Liebowitz, Stan. 2008. Anatomy of a Train Wreck: Causes of the Mortgage Meltdown. Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute.

Lopéz, Edward, Edward P. Stringham and Tom Means. 2007. Below-Market Housing Mandates as Takings: Measuring Their Impact. Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute.

O’Toole, Randal. 2006. The Planning Penalty: How Smart Growth Makes Housing Unaffordable. Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute.

Sowell, Thomas. 2010. The Housing Boom and Bust: Revised Edition. New York: Basic Books.

Liberty and the Law:

Acton, H. B. 1993. The Morals of Markets and Related Essays. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.

Barnett, Randy E. 2000. The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law. New York: Oxford University Press.

Bastiat, Frederic. 1994 [1850]. The Law. Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: Foundation for Economic Education.

Bean, Jonathan, ed. 2009. Race and Liberty in America: The Essential Reader. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky for The Independent Institute.

Bovard, James. 1995. Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Brennan, Geoffrey, and James M. Buchanan. 1985. The Reason of Rules: Constitutional Political Economy. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

De Jasay, Anthony. 1998. The State. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.

De Jouvenel, Bertrand. 2010 [1951]. The Ethics of Redistributionism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ekirch, Jr., Arthur A. 2009 [1955]. The Decline of American Liberalism. Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute.

Epstein, Richard A. 1995. Simple Rules for a Complex World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Gwartney, James D., and Richard E. Wagner, eds. 1988. Public Choice and Constitutional Economics. Greenwich, Conn.: JAI.

Hayek, F. A. 1978. The Constitution of Liberty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1991. The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

———. 2007. The Road to Serfdom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Helland, Eric A. and Alexander T. Tabarrok. 2006. Judge and Jury: American Tort Law on Trial. Oakland, CA: The Independent Institute.

Higgs, Robert. 2004. Against Leviathan: Government Power and a Free Society. Oakland, CA: The Independent Institute.

Higgs, Robert and Carl P. Close, eds. 2006. The Challenge of Liberty: Classical Liberalism Today. Oakland, CA: The Independent Institute.

Leoni, Bruno. 1991. Freedom and the Law. Indianapolis: Liberty Press.

Lomasky, Loren E. 1987. Persons, Rights, and the Moral Community. New York: Oxford University Press.

Machan, Tibor. 1995. Private Rights and Public Illusions. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers for The Independent Institute.

Mitchell, William, and Randy Simmons. 1994. Beyond Politics: Markets, Welfare and the Failure of Bureaucracy. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press for The Independent Institute.

Mises, Ludwig von. 2005. Liberalism. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.

———. 2006. Nation, State and Economy: Contributions to the Politics and History of Our Times. Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Nisbet, Robert A. 1993. The Twilight of Authority. New York: Oxford University Press.

Oppenheimer, Franz. 2009 [1908]. The State: Its History and Development Viewed Sociologically. New York: BiblioBazaar.

von Humboldt, Wilhelm. 1993. The Limits of State Action. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Classics.

Watkins, Jr., William J. 2004. Reclaiming the American Revolution: The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions and Their Legacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan for The Independent Institute.

Money and Finance:

Dowd, Kevin and Richard H. Timberland, eds. 1998. Money and the Nation State: The Financial Revolution, Government and the World Monetary System. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers for The Independent Institute.

Ferguson, Niall. 2002. The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700-2000. New York: Basic Books.

Friedman, Milton and Anna J. Schwartz. 1971. A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Pozen, Robert. 2009. Too Big to Save? How to Fix the U.S. Financial System. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Reinhart, Carmen M. and Kenneth Rogoff. 2009. This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Selgin, George. 2008. Good Money: Birmingham Button Makers, the Royal Mint, and the Beginnings of Modern Coinage, 1775-1821. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press.

Timberlake, Richard H. 1993. Monetary Policy of the United States: An Intellectual and Institutional History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.


Social Security:

Feldstein, Martin. 2000. Privatizing Social Security. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press.

Feldstein, Martin and Jeffrey B. Liebman. 2002. The Distributional Aspects of Social Security and Social Security Reform. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press.

Gokhale, Jagadeesh. 2010. Social Security: A Fresh Look at Policy Alternatives. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Kotlikoff, Laurence J., and Scott Burns. 2005. The Coming Generational Storm: What You Need to Know about America’s Economic Future, New Edition. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Orenstein, Mitchell A. 2008. Privatizing Pensions: The Transnational Campaign for Social Security Reform. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Taxation:

Beito, David T. 2009. Taxpayers in Revolt: Tax Resistance during the Great Depression. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press.

Buchanan, James M. and Geoffrey Brennan. 2001. The Power to Tax: Analytical Foundations of a Fiscal Constitution. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.

Lee, Dwight R., ed. 1986. Taxation and the Deficit Economy: Fiscal Policy and Capital Formation in the United States. San Francisco, Calif.: Pacific Research Institute.

Shughart II, William F., ed. 1998. Taxing Choice: The Predatory Politics of Fiscal Discrimination. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers for The Independent Institute.

Transportation:

Lave, Charles A., ed. 1985. Urban Transit: The Private Challenge to Public Transportation. San Francisco, Calif.: Pacific Research Institute.

Roth, Gabriel. 1982. Free Enterprise Urban Transportation. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers.

Roth, Gabriel. 1998. Roads in a Market Economy. Farnham, England: Ashgate Publishing.

Roth, Gabriel, ed. 2006. Street Smart: Competition, Entrepreneurship, and the Future of Roads. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers for The Independent Institute.

Staley, Samuel. 2008. Mobility First: A New Vision for Transportation in a Globally Competitive Twenty-first Century. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.


Welfare:

Beito, David T. 1999. From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press.

Beito, David T., Peter Gordon, and Alexander T. Tabarrok, eds. 2002. The Voluntary City: Choice, Community, and Civil Society. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press for The Independent Institute.

Brooks, Arthur C. 2007. Who Really Cares: America’s Charity Divide: Who Gives, Who Doesn’t, and Why It Matters. New York: Basic Books.

Murray, Charles. 1994. Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980. New York: Basic Books.

Shapiro, Daniel. 2007. Is the Welfare State Justified? New York: Cambridge University Press.

Tanner, Michael. 2003. The Poverty of Welfare: Helping Others in the Civil Society. Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute.

Tullock, Gordon. 2005. The Economics and Politics of Wealth Redistribution. Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund.

Voegeli, William. 2010. Never Enough: America’s Limitless Welfare State. New York: Encounter Books.

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