Constitutional political economy mostly distinguishes between rules and actions, with rules selected prior to actions within those rules. While we accept the coherence of this distinction, we pursue it within an open rather than closed scheme of analysis. Doing this entails recognition that...

I contribute to the literature on public entrepreneurship and management by analyzing the role of the political entrepreneur in Frederick the Great's Anti-Machiavel. Frederick the Great (Frederick II of Prussia) is best known for turning Prussia into an international power during the mid- to...

Since Baumol (1990), the economic literature distinguishes between two broad categories of entrepreneurship: productive and unproductive entrepreneurship. This paper attempts to introduce a third category: indirectly (un)productive entrepreneurship. We argue that profit seeking entrepreneurs...

In order to identify and evaluate an entrepreneurial opportunity calculation is required. The entrepreneur must do more than simply perceive an opportunity to do something new to create value in the marketplace. Insofar as alternative possible actions exist, the entrepreneur must choose between...

This paper explores the question of whether the market process is capable of bringing about a spontaneous monetary switch to a new currency in the presence of strong network effects of the incumbent currency. It does so by examining current happenings around Bitcoin. It finds that two mechanisms...

I criticize contractarian approaches to political economy that assume the insularity of constitutions from ordinary political exchange. Using tools from market process economics, I outline a theory of the political-entrepreneurial process as applied to constitutions. This theory can help us...

This paper makes a simple but underappreciated point: due to the open-ended nature of constitutional entrepreneurship, the personal characteristics of constitutional entrepreneurs — intellect, will, virtues and vices, etc. — directly bear on constitutional change. The paper demonstrates this...

I develop a theory of sovereign entrepreneurship, which is a special kind of political entrepreneurship. Sovereignty is rooted in self-enforced exchange of political property rights. Sovereign entrepreneurship is the creative employment of political property rights to advance a plan. Building on...