Public choice

Public choice, or public choice theory, is a formal theory of political and social science that applies economic methods—namely, rational choice theory, game theory, decision theory, and social choice theory—to study political agents (e.g. officials, bureaucrats, and voters) and their interactions. Public choice research includes theories of political behaviour, political economics, public economy, and constitutional economics. Public choice theories generally share a number of assumptions, methods, and areas of interest. Researchers emphasise the applicability of markets in the political system, the self-interested nature of agents, and the nature of decisions as a combination of individual choices rather than as an aggregate whole. Empirical methods are also relied upon by some public choice theorists in testing and validating economic models of public choice. Several notable public choice scholars have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics, including Kenneth Arrow (1972), James M. Buchanan (1986), George Stigler (1982), Gary Becker (1992), Amartya Sen (1998), Vernon Smith (2002), and Elinor Ostrom (2009). Buchanan, Smith, and Ostrom were former presidents of the Public Choice Society.