State and local governments have used targeted incentives to recruit businesses for decades. The relationship between incentives and business formation, employment, and economic growth has been studied in detail. This paper extends this literature by examining the relationship between...

The relationship between institutional quality, entrepreneurship, and economic growth has been well documented within the literature. However, much less work has been done regarding judicial independence and how this affects, specifically, entrepreneurial activity. Therefore, this paper attempts...

This article addresses the extent to which differences in judicial independence across US states influences economic freedom using the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of North America index. Overall, the results suggest that as judicial independence increases within a state’s court of...

A large literature details the causes and consequences of incarceration. This study evaluates the role of economic freedom in this context using US Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) data from 1977 to 2017. To do so, we implement economic freedom scores at the MSA level derived from Stansel...

The income convergence literature suggests that poor countries or regions can catch-up to rich ones conditional on sharing certain characteristics with rich countries or regions. Good institutions such as strong property rights and rule-of-law are key among those characteristics. Globalization...

We examine a panel of 70 countries during 1966-2010 and utilize Reinhart and Rogoff crisis dates to estimate the effects of crises on the size and scope of government over both 5-year and 10-year horizons. We also estimate cross-section regressions using 40-year (1970-2010) changes in government...