This paper explores concepts under a rubric termed “jural,” the meaning of which is differentiated from “legal.” Within the conceptualization of the modern nation-state, there are two categories of jural relationships. In the first, both parties have equal jural standing (equal-equal),...

In his General Theory, J. M. Keynes juxtaposed animal spirits and rational action. This juxtaposition created a bifurcation within economic theory. When animal spirits were quiet, societies were dominated by the rationality associated with classical economics. But when those spirits raged, those...

Some of the biggest debates over the last decade have focused on the rate of progress, both economic and scientific. As is common in times of economic crisis or slowdown, commentators have focused on what might have gone wrong. In this paper, we consider whether the rate of scientific progress...

This paper uses Vincent Ostrom’s treatment of democracy as entailing a Faustian bargain to explore some challenges that confront his research program into the theory of human association. To carry this exploration, I concentrate on Ostrom’s 1997 book, The Meaning of Democracy and the...

The appeal of The Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) has moved with openness to non-foundationalism. This paper is devoted to providing evidence of that bivariate relationship. The paper stems from a 2018 article, “Dissing The Theory of Moral Sentiments.” I have pared down the quotations and...

After the Civil War, the Democratic party carried an important electoral penalty from being associated with the war. To deal with this penalty, the party took increasingly anti-immigration positions to compete with Republicans. This led some Republican strongholds such as California to become...

This paper argues that government and market institutions when interacting with one another lead to the generation of a network effect in property value. Using data from the Florida Department of Revenue on market value assessments of homes in 17 counties, I find that living in a basic governing...

Karl Mittermaier (1938-2016) was a classical liberal economist at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He completed a work in 1986 titled The Hand Behind the Invisible Hand: Dogmatic and Pragmatic Views on Free Markets and the State of Economic Theory, being published in 2020 for the...

We propose a model of political careers and electoral accountability, in an environment in which politicians may take bribes at different stages of their careers, and in which politicians actions are only imperfectly observed by voters. Our model throws light on relatively unexplored dynamic...

Some of today's most heated policy debates about Brexit, trade wars, climate change abatement, and migration involve redistribution of resources within a given country (national redistribution) and between countries (global redistribution). Nevertheless, theories and evidence on preferences for...