Many economists agree that markets work exceptionally well yet concede that this can only happen within the context of clearly defined property rights, which necessitates government action. This is false. Ice harvesters in 19th century Boston were able to create their own system of property...

This paper seeks to provide a sketch of a micro-level explanation of public finance. De Viti De Marco (1936) and Buchanan (1949) provide initial starting points for understanding this view of public finance, which was subsequently extended by Wagner (1992, 2007a) and Yoon (2000), among others....

What is the place of political parties within a democratic system of political economy? Parties are often described as intermediaries that lubricate the political process by facilitating the matching of voter preferences with candidate positions. This line of analysis flows from a bi-planar...

Tullock (2005, p. 160) notes that the perceived robust relationship between democracy and economic progress is due mostly to assumption, rather than analysis. Taking up Tullock's challenge to consider the relationship between economic progress and other political forms, we re-assess the...

Today, the debate about public indebtedness has reached a fervor not often seen among professional economists and the general public. This has renewed considerations of requiring Congress to balance its budget, through either a Constitutional amendment or some other legislative or statutory...

Civics students from time immemorial have been taught that there is a strict hierarchy within legislative bodies. In the case of the United States, this view would suggest that Congress is at the center of all legislative decisions and that Congress is responsible for all legislative decisions...

Economists have addressed the effect of taxes on a polity, with several economists then using their findings to justify the implementation of various tax schemes. These theories are loosely based on the ideas of fiscal philosophers from the end of the 19th century, with recent work demonstrating...

Traditional public choice analysis implicitly views political outcomes as the intention of a single-minded person. This view is seriously misguided. Rather than viewing politics as being done by one person or a group of persons acting in concert, this paper presents an Austrian economist's...

This paper identifies two broad strands of fiscal theorizing which date back to the late 19th century in the persons of Knut Wicksell (1896) and Francis Edgeworth (1897). From Edgeworth descends the treatment of public finance as a branch of applied statecraft, as conveyed these days largely...