Essays analysing historical cases of economic intervention by national governments

Abstract

The three essays which make up this thesis deal with particular historical cases where the market in various national, or international, markets may have failed to function Pareto-optimally. While indicating in each of the essays where the relevant market(s) may have failed, the essential objective of these essays is to critically assess the government economic interventionist policies which these market failures called forth. The first essay attempts to establish whether, or not, the Japanese government of the Meiji period was constrained from attaining Pareto-optimal levels of economic intervention by virtue of the fact that it was prevented by international trade treaties from imposing tariffs on imports. While it is shown that in a world without any subsidiary constraints the Japanese government probably still could have achieved Pareto-optimum levels of intervention, once other apparently realistic institutional constraints are imposed on the analysis this result becomes less certain. The second essay is mainly concerned with determining whether or not the government assistance given to the United States cotton textile industry of the ante-bellum period was optimally applied. This government intervention is mainly assessed from the point of view of the infant industry argument, although part of the discussion departs from this perspective for considering the issue at hand. The conclusions reached vary somewhat from those attained by others who have considered this topic. In the final essay the issue discussed is the problems the British government had between 1754 and 1775 in implementing its public finance policy in the thirteen British North American colonies; a policy aimed at providing, and paying for, collectively consumed goods. The central theme considered is what were the political-economic factors which made this government economic intervention unacceptable to the American colonists.