Crony capitalism in The Gilded Age by Twain and Warner and its relevance for today

Abstract

The novel The Gilded Age, A Tale of Today by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner tells the tale of crony capitalism in the United States after the Civil War and is the book that gave 'The Gilded Age' era its name. The chapter uses the public choice framework to analyse themes in the novel and provides various excerpts and assignments that could be incorporated into an undergraduate upper-level field course, such as Public Choice, Public Sector Economics or United States Economic History. Examples from the novel are compared to real-world events in the United States, showing parallels between today's economy and the roots of the so-called Progressive Era.