Mixon Invited to Guest Edit a Special Issue of Frontiers Journal

Turner College economics professor Frank Mixon was recently invited to guest edit a forthcoming special issue of Frontiers in Applied Mathematics and Statistics.  Mixon will be assisted in this endeavor by Richard Cebula, a professor of economics at George Mason University.  The title of the special issue will be “Theoretical and Empirical Approaches to Public Choice.”  As Mixon explained to Turner Business, public choice is often defined as the application of the methodology of economics to the study of politics.  Given that the machinations of politics occur outside of traditional market settings, public choice has also been referred to as the (economic) study of non-market decision making.  “As evident by these descriptions, public choice is an inherently interdisciplinary field, whose contributions have emanated from economists, political scientists, legal scholars, and mathematicians, among others.  As such, examinations of the subject are sometimes formal or mathematical in nature, while others are empirical, often using regression and other statistical techniques to test concepts developed from theoretical approaches,” Mixon stated.  Mixon is hopeful that the special issue of the journal will offer a set of original and novel studies pertaining to several of the various subjects that constitute the growing field of public choice economics.  These include, but are not limited to, bureaucracy, constitutions, elections, international organizations, judiciaries, parliamentary procedures, public finance, rent seeking, special interests, and voters/voting.  To that end, Mixon has invited a number of prominent public choice scholars to make contributions to the product.  Some have already accepted, including Richard Wagner and Zachary Kessler of George Mason University, Friedrich Schneider of Johannes Kepler University (Austria), and Antonio Bojanic of Tulane University.  “Interest in politics and the political process appears to be as high as ever.  Recent elections and judicial rulings in the United States, military conflict in Eastern Europe, and geopolitical strife in the Asia Pacific region have led to renewed interest in the inner workings of legislatures and bureaucracies, the uncertainties faced by citizen-voters, and the stability of electoral systems.  I hope that this special issue will provide an array of public choice studies that illuminate many of these and other issues,” Mixon added. 

Launched in 2015, Frontiers in Applied Mathematics and Statistics publishes peer-reviewed research in the multidisciplinary areas of both applied and applicable mathematics and statistics.  Led by Professor Charles Chui of Stanford University, it fosters interdisciplinary research within mathematical and statistical disciplines and provides a platform to highlight the latest developments in these continually evolving fields.