Acknowledgments

The story of this book began in the fall of 2005 when the two of us began a conversation about how to teach political economy, both to our students and to the public. We agreed that the available books tended to be written for professional, technical readers and that there was an opportunity to convey the economics of politics in an engaging, more readable, yet still serious way. As we shared our conversation with friends and colleagues, the idea for this book began to take hold. And it never would have come to fruition without their gracious help. In particular, for comments that improved individual chapters we would like to thank Roberto Blum, Peter Boettke, Victor Borme, Tyler Cowen, Chris Coyne, Kenneth Godwin, Joshua Hall, Lissa Hanckel, David Henderson, Giancarlo Ibárgüen, Carlos Méndez, and Sarah Skwire. For helpful comments on multiple chapters we would also like to thank William Ferguson and an anonymous referee. Michael Munger and William Shughart provided valuable comments on the entire manuscript. Don Crooks, Ben Dyer, and Jeff Fong provided excellent research assistance, and Laralyn Murphy helped with formatting. There are many more people whose conversations along the way helped sharpen our thinking and how we build our arguments. We are grateful to them all, but they are in no way responsible for errors, omissions, and other missteps that remain entirely our own.

We also would like to thank several organizations that supported us while researching and writing this book, namely Universidad Francisco Marroquín; Liberty Fund, Inc.; the Social Philosophy & Policy Center at Bowling Green State University; and Stanford University Press.

None of this would have been possible without the expert guidance of our editor, Margo Beth Fleming, whose vision and wisdom kept us moving in the right direction and whose commitment and attention to detail got us across the finish line.

Most of all, we thank Elizabeth Andrion and Jamie López for reading every word, improving every chapter, and always keeping us grounded in what is truly important.