Price theory analysis teaches us that, as the cost of using markets rises (ie transaction costs), we will expect to see either higher prices in the market, lower activity, or some combination of the two. We have a natural experiment to test this hypothesis in water exchange markets in Colorado....

Buchanan and Wagner (1977) pointed to an asymmetry in the political rewards of deficits and surpluses with the former being preferable to the latter. We test this claim by relying on the historical reputation surveys of American presidents. Historical reputations have long been something...

From the 19th century to the 1940's, Quebec remained poorer and less economically developed than the rest of Canada in general and poorer than Ontario in particular. This placed Quebec at the bottom of North American rankings of living standards. One prominent hypothesis for the initiation of...

Economic freedom is often defined as a negative liberty – freedom from interference. This contrasts with positive liberty which is defined as freedom to do which refers to capacities. A well-established literature argues that income inequality reduces positive liberty by limiting the...

In 2014, the State Council of the Chinese Communist Party announced the institution of a social credit system by 2020, a follow-up to a similar statement on the creation of a social credit system issued by the State Council in 2007. Social credit ratings of the type being developed by the State...

Lighthouses are the quintessential public goods and thus constitute a key illustration of market failure in need of government remedy. Considerable debates have been waged over whether optimal private provision was historically possible. However, little to no attention has been devoted to how...

With respect to ordering different fields of scholarly inquiry, ethics is commonly thought to be independent of economics, and, moreover, with ethical principles standing in judgment of economizing actions. In contrast, we explore a line of thought where ethics, politics, and commerce all emerge...

All governments are potential police states. Constitutionally constrained democracies are no exception, as demonstrated by America’s post-9/11 experience. In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the U.S. government expanded its domestic police powers in the name of protecting the...

The Mongol conquest was one of the bloodiest wars in human history. The Mongol conquest of China (1205-1279 AD) continued to have persistent negative effects on long-term development, even centuries after the war. Using newly assembled war, population, and 16th century county-level agricultural...