A Macroeconomic View of Public Choice: New Political Macroeconomics as a Separate Tradition of Public Choice

Abstract

Public choice theory is listed under microeconomics in the JEL code. It is considered largely an issue of microeconomics, as well as the microeconomists who straddle the boundary between economics and political science. Starting from the 1970s, however, there has been an increasing number of macroeconomists researching on topics related to public choice-inspired macroeconomic models, and a few public choice scholars have discussed macroeconomic issues under the public choice framework. The difference is that the first group has attempted to separate themselves from the very label of “public choice” itself, adopting all manners of alternative labels (such as political macroeconomics, political economics, new political economy, among others). To these I use the term “New Political Macroeconomics” as an umbrella label for this tradition. This has created conflicts with other public choice traditions, especially the Virginia tradition. They claim that this attempt to “separate” from public choice is harmful to the entire field of economic analysis of politics. This article is an attempt to understand the formation of new political macroeconomics, how it became its own tradition of public choice and why it would want to separate from the label of “public choice theory.” The reasons, as this article shall detail, are primarily the political macroeconomists’ adoption of the macroeconomics paradigm, and the attempt to distance themselves from the ideological association with libertarianism present in some public choice traditions. This discussion indicates how differences in language and values might impact how economists see their subject of study: even if public choice theorists and political macroeconomists study similar topics, they have different understandings of them.