Public Choice: Instructions to Authors

Scope. Public Choice deals with the intersection between economists and political science. It started when economists and political scientists became interested in the application of essentially economic methods to problems normally dealt with by political scientists. It has retained strong traces of economic methodology, but new and fruitful techniques have been developed which are not recognizable by economists.

In general, Public Choice can be viewed as a field of interest to both economists and political scientists who are interested in theoretical rigor, statistical testing, and applications to real world problems.

1. Manuscripts (original plus two copies) and other correspondence relating to articles should be sent to Public Choice Editorial Office, P.O. Box 17, 3300 AA Dordrecht, The Netherlands. North American authors may submit manuscripts to Public Choice Editorial Office, P.O. Box 230, Accord, MA 02018-0230, USA.

2. Review manuscripts (original plus one copy) and review inquiries as well as books for reviewing should be sent to Book Review Editor.

3. All manuscripts should be typewritten on one side of the sheet on good quality bond paper (8 1/2 x 11 inches or A4), with margins at least 1 1/4 inches (3.0cm) on all sides. All material should be double-spaced, including quotations, notes, references, and figure captions. Quoted passages of more than 100 words should be set off from the text by indenting the left-hand margin five spaces. Pages should be numbered consecutively throughout the manuscript; the author's name should appear on each page. Mimeographed copies will not be accepted unless clearly legible.

4. An abstract of no more than 100 words and a list of 5-10 keywords are required. They should be included when the paper is submitted for publication.

5. Endnotes should be collected together at the end of the manuscript (before References). They should be numbered consecutively (with the number on the line, followed by a period) and indicated in the text by superior numbers.

   Mueller (1970: 19) reports the correlation between approving and disapproving percentages is -.98.

6. References should be listed alphabetically at the end of each paper. They should be cross-referenced in the text by using the author's name and publication date in the style of Smith (1982), (Smith, 1982) or (Smith, 1982:4) according to the context. They should be typed in the following style:

   Wolfinger, R. and Rosenstone, S. (1980). Who votes? New Haven: Yale University Press.

   Frey, B.S. (1982). The public choice approach to the explanation of collective consumption. In R.C.O. Matthews and G.B. Stafford (Eds.), The grants economy and collective consumption, 43-65. London: Macmillan.

   Mueller, D.C. and Murrell, P. (1986). Interest groups and the size of government. Public Choice 48(2): 125-145.

   Parks, R.W. (1978). Inflation and relative price variability. Journal of Political Economy 86 (February): 79-96.

   Cameron, S.E. (1981). Educational level as a predictor of success. Unpublished manuscript.

   Myerson, J.F. (1986). Effects of inflation. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. McGill University, Montreal.

   Wickström, B.-A. (1984). Rationality and public choice: Government popularity in Norway 1964-1976. Mimeo. Paper presented at the Meeting of the European Public Choice Society in Munich. October.

   (Please note, each individual reference that carries over onto an additional line(s) should be indented from the second line onwards at the beginning of each line by two spaces. Unfortunately, this formatting is not presently supported by HTML and is not illustrated by the example above.)

   Please abbreviate all first names and repeat author's name for each entry.

7. Tables should be typed on separate sheets, numbered consecutively with arabic numerals and have titles (use same format as for figure captions). They should be prepared in such a manner that no break is necessary. The use of vertical lines in tables is strongly discouraged. The approximate required locations of the tables should be indicated in the left-hand margin of the MS.

8. Camera copy for figures should be submitted with the manuscript. Each figure should bear the author's name and the figure number, written on a label and pasted on the back of the figure. Line drawings should be directly reproducible, with the lettering of a size that will be legible after reduction. Figure captions should be typed double-spaced on a separate page of the manuscript, using the following format:

   Figure 1. Share of European authors among all authors in the journal Public Choice, 1969-1983

9. Formulae should be type-written whenever possible. Alternatively, a fine drawing pen and black ink should be used. It is extremely important that all mathematical symbols and letters used are identified and listed and that the required style of appearance of such symbols is clearly indicated, e.g., bold face, italics, script, outline, fraktur, etc. Sub- and super-script should be clearly indicated where confusion might arise. Use a period as a decimal sign. Identify in the margin any symbols that might be confused with similar symbols, e.g. letter l and figure 1, capital letter O and figure 0, letter e, epsilon sign e , and element sign Î , etc.

10. Empirical work should be clearly described. Data definitions and sources should be reported in detail, where possible in a separate table incorporating summary statistics. The variables employed in regression analysis should be spelled out fully in words rather than in shorthand notation, (e.g. real federal deficit and not RFD). The dependent variable should be defined and the sample coverage and goodness of fit statistics should be reported. Upon publication, authors are expected to make available upon request their data to interested scholars.

11. Page Charges. For accepted articles, there is a fee of $30 a page for each page of the manuscript, typed in the standard American way, beyond 25.

12. Miscellaneous. Throughout the manuscript, i.e. the title, headings, notes, references, table and figure captions, use an uppercase letter only for the first word and such other words as the orthography of English requires.

    Compliance with Public Choice 'Instructions to authors' will be required before manuscript is finally accepted for publication.