Public choice theory was initiated by economists and political scientists in the late-1950s and early 1960s and is generally described as the application of economic concepts and formulations to political phenomena. This essay explains that economizing action and public choice are universal...

Violent conflict is a global phenomenon with devastating costs to individuals and their communities. Government experts and policymakers have responded with efforts to reduce violence and make peace. Such efforts are often implemented from the top-down, however, and are consequently limited in...

Many classical liberals believe in the need for a minimal, “nightwatchman” state to provide protection against internal and external threats. From this perspective, a muscular and centralized government-run national-security state is necessary for a free and liberal society. At the same...

This chapters surveys the main ideas and tensions in the classical liberal treatment of defense, international relations, and war-making. This sets the stage for a discussion of the feasibility of interstate federalism by identifying key issues and challenges that such a system will need to...

The literature connecting economic freedom indexes to income levels and growth generally points in the direction of a positive association. In this paper, we argue that this finding is a highly conservative as the data is heavily biased against finding any effects. The bias emerges as a result...

What is the connection between mass surveillance and institutions of individual agency, freedom, and self-governance? Recent literature on “surveillance capitalism” argues that over the past two decades, the capitalist system has been transformed by Big Tech companies, which have commodified...

Milton Friedman, in the 1960s, was convinced that the British government official in charge of Hong Kong's economic policy — John Cowperthwaite — was largely responsible for running the most radical experiment in economic history. Cowperthwaite, a classical liberal enrolled in the British...

In testimony before Congress in 1969, economist Kenneth Boulding argued that “The war industry is a cancer within the body of American society. It has its own mode of growth, it represents a system which is virtually independent and indeed objectively inimical to the welfare of the American...

This paper discusses the unique features of Austrian economics and some of the recent contributions of this school of thought. We organize these contributions in different research “buckets” in the hope that this will be a useful guide to readers while demonstrating the ongoing relevance of...

An individual’s beliefs about whether luck or effort determine how economically successful people are in life (luck/effort beliefs) are central for how she views society. In general, a person who thinks that luck is relatively more important than effort accepts less inequality, wants more...