Across my desk this morning: James Bennett’s new book, Corporate Welfare: Crony Capitalism That Enriches the Rich.

Bennett is a highly regarded George Mason professor of economics and a prolific author of public policy books. His new book opens with a discussion of corporate welfare in the Early Republic, and then provides four case studies on more recent issues. The case studies are the Supersonic Transport (SST) project of the 1960s, state and local economic development subsidies, the use of eminent domain in Detroit to benefit General Motors, and the Export-Import Bank.

The last item is timely given the current battle over Ex-Im between the fiscal reform and business-subsidy wings of the Republican Party. It is an important battle because a win for reform on Ex-Im might generate momentum to wean American businesses off of other types of subsidies. I also think that ending Ex-Im would make recipient businesses more competitive and efficient in the long run. Subsidies produce industrial weakness, not strength.

Here’s what I said about Corporate Welfare on the book’s dust jacket:

Professor Bennett begins his excellent new book about corporate welfare with Alexander Hamilton’s misguided schemes. Fortunately, those schemes were mainly blocked in the early Republic by the Jeffersonian party. The problem today—as Bennett skillfully documents—is that business subsidies are a bipartisan disease, chronic at all levels of government. Few politicians stand up for the taxpayer, despite citizen opposition to hand-outs from across the political spectrum. Hopefully, Bennett’s stomach-turning stories will convince more people of the evils of crony capitalism.