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• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowlegments
• Cost and Choice
• 1.: Cost In Economic Theory
• Classical Economics
• Marginal-utility Economics
• The Marshallian Synthesis
• Frank Knight and American Neoclassical Paradigms
• 2.: The Origins and Development of a London Tradition
• Wicksteed and the Calculus of Choice
• H. J. Davenport
• Knight On Cost As Valuation
• Robbins, 1934
• Mises, Robbins, and Hayek On Calculation In a Socialist Economy
• Hayek, Mises, and Subjectivist Economics
• The Practical Relevance of Opportunity Cost: Coase, 1938
• G. F. Thirlby and “the Ruler”
• Mises’ Human Action
• The Death of a Tradition?
• Appendix to Chapter 2: Shackle On Decision
• 3.: Cost and Choice
• The Predictive Science of Economics
• Cost In the Predictive Theory
• Cost In a Theory of Choice
• Choice-influencing and Choice-influenced Cost
• Opportunity Cost and Real Cost
• The Subjectivity of Sunk Costs
• Cost and Equilibrium
• 4.: The Cost of Public Goods
• The Theory of Tax Incidence
• Costs and Fiscal Decision-making: the Democratic Model
• Costs and Decision-making: the Authoritarian Model
• Costs and Decision-making: Mixed Models
• The Choice Among Projects
• The Costs of Debt-financed Public Goods
• Ricardo’s Equivalence Theorem
• Tax Capitalization
• 5.: Private and Social Cost
• Summary Analysis
• A Closer Look
• Internal Costs, Equilibrium, and Quasi-rents
• An Illustrative Example
• Pigovian Economics and Christian Ethics
• Narrow Self-interest and Alternative-opportunity Quasi-rents
• Conclusion
• 6.: Cost Without Markets
• Prices, Costs, and Market Equilibrium
• Resource-service Prices As Final-product Costs
• Market Equilibrium, Costs, and Quasi-rents
• The Cost of Military Manpower: an Example
• The Cost of Crime: Another Example
• Artificial Choice-making
• Socialist Calculation and Socialist Choice
• Costs In Bureaucratic Choice

Acknowlegments

I consider myself fortunate to be able to regard Frank H. Knight as “my professor,” and his influence on my thinking is more direct in this book than in my other works. Both his insistence on getting fundamental ideas straight and his important contributions to cost theory have provided inspirations for my efforts.

More specifically, I should here acknowledge the help of many students, colleagues, and fellow scholars. Students in 1965 and 1967 graduate seminars at the University of Virginia suffered with me during the critical periods when my confusions were at their peaks. In 1967 an early draft was circulated, and I was fortunate in securing much useful revision advice. In this respect, I appreciate the help provided by William Breit, R. H. Coase, F. A. Hayek, Mark Pauly, Roger Sherman, G. F. Thirlby, Gordon Tullock, Richard E. Wagner, Thomas Willett, and Jack Wiseman. Although they probably did not realize it, both Francesco Forte and S. H. Frankel provided encouragement in discussions at critical times when my own enthusiasm wavered.

As on numerous other occasions, my work on this book was facilitated at many stages by my secretary Betty Tillman, whose loyalty and devotion are rarely matched in this increasingly impersonal world of academic scholarship.

J. M. B.

Los Angeles
March 1969