This paper presents the results of the Mercatus Center's Small Bank Survey, which include responses from approximately 200 banks across 41 states with less than $10 billion in assets each, serving mostly rural and small metropolitan markets. The initial analysis suggests that Dodd-Frank...

Nicholas Vriend (2002) asked whether F.A. Hayek was an “ace,” and answered affirmatively. By “ace,” Vriend meant someone who worked with agent-based modeling. To be sure, Hayek could not have worked with agent-based models because that platform did not exist when Hayek was developing his...

The idea of a kaleidic economy or society is strongly associated with George Shackle and his vision of Keynesian kaleidics. This essay asserts that the central thrust of the Austrian tradition in economic analysis can be described by the term Viennese kaleidics. In either version of kaleidics,...

This essay stems from Jim Dorn's invitation to encapsulate my recent book, Politics as a Peculiar Business: Insights from a Theory of Entangled Political Economy (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2016). Where standard political economy treats states as singular entities that intervene into...

This paper discusses the unique features of Austrian economics and some of the recent contributions of this school of thought. We organize these contributions in different research “buckets” in the hope that this will be a useful guide to readers while demonstrating the ongoing relevance of...

I have been asked to compare James Buchanan's body of work with that of George Stigler for a symposium on Stigler's contributions to economics. I run my exposition through Frank Knight, who exerted strong though different forms of influence over both Stigler and Buchanan. Stigler's oeuvre is...

I have been asked to explore how James Buchanan’s work on public finance and constitutional political economy might have emerged out of themes present in Frank Knight’s oeuvre, especially his Risk Uncertainty, and Profit. Buchanan’s body of work has inspired the development of a style of...

This essay explores the Chicago origin of two forms of contemporary political economy. One form was initiated at Chicago through George Stigler. The other form was initiated at Virginia through James Buchanan and is generally designated as public choice. Stigler and Buchanan were both students...

Game theory holds out the promise of transforming the core of economic theory from ascience of rational choice into a science of human interaction. While traditional gametheory does open into social interaction, it mostly neglects another central feature ofeconomic intuition: spontaneous...

A problem that has plagued market failure discussions is: "why does bad policy exist and persist?" Various schools of thought have answered that question, but I argue that the explanations, while correct, are incomplete. In this paper, I apply the expert failure literature to the problem of...