Expositions of the theory of public finance mostly assume that taxation must be the primary instrument for generating revenue. This assumption is neither historically accurate nor theoretically necessary. Rather, it universalizes an institutional arrangement that is particular to the...

Democratic governments can be either national or federal in form. Whether the form of democracy matters, how it matters if, indeed, it does matter, and for whom it might matter are the types of questions this paper explores. Federalism is generally described as a pro-liberty form of government....

How did modern and centralized fiscal institutions emerge? We develop a model that explains (i) why pre-industrial states relied on private individuals to collect taxes; (ii) why after 1600 both England and France moved from competitive methods for collecting revenues to allocating the right to...

This paper argues that government and market institutions when interacting with one another lead to the generation of a network effect in property value. Using data from the Florida Department of Revenue on market value assessments of homes in 17 counties, I find that living in a basic governing...

Economic theory contains a significant theoretical antinomy that we seek to erase. That theory can account for coordination through markets. Such coordination, however, covers only some 50-60 percent of economic activity within developed nations. The theory ignores the remainder by presuming...

Existing scholarship examines the moral status of markets, identifying some markets as “noxious”—markets deemed morally objectionable due to the background conditions preceding exchange and the resulting consequences. This literature primarily focuses on market exchanges between private...

Economic theory contains a significant theoretical antinomy. Markets are thought to secure coordination in self-organized fashion. In contrast, polities are portrayed as securing coordination through planning and administration. Doing this is to commit what Mitchel Resnick (1994) calls the...

What institutional features encourage community policing? Many police departments across the US have attempted to implement a community-oriented policing philosophy. The stated goals are to build greater trust between the police and the community, maintain order and quality of life, and solve...

This paper exploits panel data from the Food Security Survey to examine varying transaction costs on SNAP benefit take-up by tracking individuals eligible for SNAP benefits. Using a logistic regression model, I find SNAP-eligible households living in states with relatively low transaction costs...

It is nearly universally presumed that redistribution can be carried out effectively only at the national or even global level, because local redistribution will be negated through personal mobility: recipients will move to high-paying jurisdictions while taxpayers will move away from those...