Reflections on Public Choice

My 2002 presidential address to the PublicChoice Society consisted of three parts.The first had to do with the business ofthe Society's 2002 meeting and plans forthe Nashville meeting, and has beenomitted. This essay begins with the secondsection of that talk, in which I identifywhat I call the classic books ofPublic Choice, and then discuss what I viewas common misconceptions about PublicChoice. The next section of this essaysurveys five of the most importantempirical puzzles in Public Choice theory(three of them taken from the work ofAnthony Downs), and my own attempts overthe years to come to grips with thesepuzzles. I should note that, despite mycourtesy appointment in UCI's EconomicsDepartment, in this essay I write primarilyfrom the perspective of a politicalscientist – albeit, one with lots offriends who happen to beeconomists.