Since at least Adam Smith, political economists have inquired into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations. From a public choice perspective, this economic transition from poverty to wealth can be reframed in terms of an escape from the transitional gains trap (Tullock 1975). Understood...

This chapter argues that the ambiguous bifurcation in Frank Knight's understanding of economics would manifest itself through the divergent paths in the earlier writings of his students Milton Friedman and James Buchanan. It argues that despite Friedman's stature in the scientific elite of the...