In this essay, VanMetre and Hall draw upon the Austrian and new institutional schools of economics and deploy the Economic Freedom of the World Index to empirically test the relationship between property rights and economic prosperity. Their analysis confirms De Soto's thesis that secure...

Illinois has run a structural deficit for over a decade [as of the date of this paper, October 2011]. The state's unfunded pension obligations are $173 billion, with the fund projected to run out of assets by 2018. Illinois's Other Post Employment Benefits (OPEB)—largely consisting of health...

The SIC sectors identified for direct, indirect, and in kind rent seeking activity have been identified and verified empirically in Sobel & Garrett (2002) by comparing capital counties to non-capital counties. We convert these industries from SIC to NAICS codes and provide measures of direct,...

Which states are the most paternalistic, in terms of telling you what you can and can't do? Which states tax individual choices like gambling, smoking, or using plastic bags most heavily? This chapter ranks the states according to how much their tax codes distort individual choices in private...