Federalism is commonly described in contradictory fashion as involving both competition and decentralization. These descriptions may appear similar on the surface but they emanate from contradictory analytical orientations. Competition entails a polycentric arrangement of competitors where there...

This paper contrasts raising and leveling as alternative conceptual frameworks regarding the social organization of welfare. At least since Richard Musgrave’s (1959) tripartite organization of the theory of public finance, most fiscal scholars have treated the redistributive activities of...

This paper presents the preface and first chapter of my book on James M. Buchanan, which should be out in late 2017, published by Lexington. This chapter introduces Buchanan to those who don't know him, or who know him only in terms of individual pieces of work they have encountered. I portray...

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...

This paper uses the 19th century concern with “the social question” as a vehicle to explore how the theories we use can shape, for better or for worse, our insights into our subjects of interest. Contemporary thinking mostly channels the social question into a focus on inequality in the...

This essay treats entangled political economy within the history of political economy. It explains that entangled political economy is not so much a new development in economics as it is a revisitation of some old themes that were swept aside in the conversion of political economy into economics...

Gordon Tullock (1922-2014) was a thinker par excellence. As with most thinkers, the tale of his life is told mostly through his scholarship. Accordingly, this essay reviews Tullock's scholarship in such fields as public choice, law and economics, rent seeking, bureaucracy, social conflict, and...

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...

This is a review essay on Vito Tanzi's "Government versus Markets: The Changing Economic Role of the State." The bulk of this book looks backward on the relative growth of government from late in the 19th century until recent times when that growth seems to have stopped in many places. Tanzi...