Bagus and Howden (2011) argue that price stickiness is a poor justification for advocating a flexible money supply through the issuing of fiduciary media under central or free banking. They view the contraction in output following an exogenous increase in money demand as an optimal response,...

What governs central bank decisions? Most considerations focus on motivations. Instead, we consider the extent to which specific behaviors have adaptive value in the context of central banking. From this perspective, poor decisions are not the product of poor motivations. They are, instead, a...

On March 16, 2013, Cyprus announced that it would accept a bailout that required imposing a one-time levy on bank deposits. It has been argued that, by making traditional deposit accounts seem less secure, the bailout announcement prompted some to consider — or reconsider — using the...

Over the course of three hundred years, the institutional organization of the Christian church evolved from small loosely organized groups meeting in house churches to a form of hierarchical organization known as monepiscopacy. Monepiscopacy denotes a form of ecclesial polity in which a single...

This paper applies Kirzner’s theory of entrepreneurial alertness to central banking. As opposed to entrepreneurs operating within the market, central banks can operate outside the market by defining its structure and regulations. We label as “super-alertness” the particular type of...

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the political philosophy of John C. Calhoun from the perspective of Virginia Political Economy. Specifically, this paper argues that Calhoun's theory of the concurrent majority offers a way of operationalizing the "generality norm" of Buchanan and...