This chapter seeks to explain the broad dissatisfaction among the general population of observed political outcomes. To illustrate this, this chapter discusses the growth of the federal tax code over the last century. Despite there being near universal public support for a tax code that is...

Many economists agree that markets work exceptionally well yet concede that this can only happen within the context of clearly defined property rights, which necessitates government action. This is false. Ice harvesters in 19th century Boston were able to create their own system of property...

This paper seeks to provide a sketch of a micro-level explanation of public finance. De Viti De Marco (1936) and Buchanan (1949) provide initial starting points for understanding this view of public finance, which was subsequently extended by Wagner (1992, 2007a) and Yoon (2000), among others....

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...

Tullock (2005, p. 160) notes that the perceived robust relationship between democracy and economic progress is due mostly to assumption, rather than analysis. Taking up Tullock's challenge to consider the relationship between economic progress and other political forms, we re-assess the...

Today, the debate about public indebtedness has reached a fervor not often seen among professional economists and the general public. This has renewed considerations of requiring Congress to balance its budget, through either a Constitutional amendment or some other legislative or statutory...