Constitutional political economy has focused heavily on designing constitutional rules sufficient to constrain governmental power. More attention has been devoted to designing rules that are effective constraints than on the institutions that would be required to enforce them. One problem is...

The study of entrepreneurship often focuses on the activities of the entrepreneur. While entrepreneurship is undertaken by individuals, the degree to which individuals are entrepreneurial, and the directions in which their entrepreneurial actions take, are the result of the institutional...

Economic models of democratic decision-making tend to assume that voters have preferences and politicians adjust their platforms to conform to voter preferences. However, the direction of causation (mostly) goes the other way. Political elites offer policy platforms and voters adopt the policy...

Why do some democracies persist while others break down? Some studies have suggested that economic development decreases the likelihood of authoritarian reversal, which is consistent with Milton Friedman's argument that economic freedom is necessary for political freedom. An empirical...

A substantial body of literature concludes that nations that maintain market institutions and have limited governments have higher economic growth rates and higher per capita incomes. This conclusion goes back at least to Adam Smith (1937 [1776]), and includes historical studies by Mokyr (1990)...

Higher levels of government expenditures and more regulation naturally invite corruption, because they provide the opportunity for government officials to be paid off for regulatory favors, subsidies, and government contracts. Some countries have relatively large governments but lower levels of...

The freedom to enter into contracts and to direct the use of economic resources one owns are essential to the operation of a market economy. Allowing employees to form unions to bargain collectively over wages and employment conditions is consistent with economic freedom, and any government...

Using the political-economic history of the development of telephony during the 1870s as a backdrop, this paper studies a two-player Tullock contest that includes both research effort (R&D) and legal effort (i.e., rent-seeking effort). The two types of efforts complement each other and...