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...

This paper treats the structure of economic theory as a product of spontaneously ordered relationships among theorists in a setting where different institutional frameworks can govern those relationships. Those differences generate different selection principles among economic theories and,...

Holländer (1990) argued that when non-monetary social approval from peers is sufficiently valuable, it works to promote cooperation. Holländer, however, did not define the characteristics of environments in which high valued approval is likely to occur. This paper provides evidence from a...

In randomized control laboratory experiments, we find that those primed to think about markets exhibit more trusting behavior. We randomly and unconsciously prime experimental participants to think about markets and trade. We then ask them to play a trust game involving an anonymous stranger. We...

In games with multiple, Pareto-rankable equilibria and repeated play, does a history of playing an inefficient equilibrium make it harder for the players to reach the efficient equilibrium? In other words, can people 'get stuck' in bad equilibria? Previous studies have found support for this,...

The idea of an identifiable school of thought denoted as Virginia political economy was in play at least as early as 1963, and it is reasonable to conclude that this identifier began to take shape some years earlier. It is common though not universal to identify a school of thought...

Coordination games have become a critical tool of analysis in fields such as development and institutional economics. Understanding behavior in coordination games is an important step towards understanding the differing success of teams, firms and nations. This paper investigates the...