Recent studies examining the relationship between legislative majorities and state budgets have presented mixed results. We provide new insight on this relationship by employing stochastic frontier analysis to model the maximum potential budgets that could be feasibly produced given a set of...

How can societies advance social justice? Many of the goals of social justice are addressed by research on economic freedom, including social tolerance and protection of minority rights, promotion of democracy and political freedoms, and income inequality. We survey the academic literature on...

Oates' (1972) decentralization theorem holds that local governments will do a superior job at providing the efficient quantity of public goods. Brennan and Buchanan (1980) suggest that "the potential for fiscal exploitation varies inversely with the number of competing governmental units in the...

There has been an international trend towards shifting the provision of public services down to lower levels of government. That decentralization has increased the relative importance of local governments. This paper examines the relationship between spending by those local governments and...

The Economic Freedom of North America (EFNA) index, which ranks the states, was first produced in 2002 and has been updated annually since 2010. The 2016 report was its twelfth edition. The EFNA index has been cited in over 200 academic articles, book chapters, and policy papers. We provide an...

This paper provides the first examination of the relationship between eminent domain activity and the growth (and level) of state and local revenue. We restrict our attention to takings that are for private use, such as the one that led to the landmark Kelo decision in 2005. One of the arguments...

This case examines the issues surrounding the expansion of utility services for a Florida city. Students are required to examine alternative financing options available and the economic impact and hardship that citizens from different regions of the city will potentially bear under alternative...