Austrian business cycle theory (ABCT) is a body of hypotheses embodying particularly Austrian insights and assumptions. The canonical variant associated with Mises (1934, 1963) and Hayek (1933, 1935) is particularly well-suited to the Great Depression. However, it is an inadequate account of the...

Why did the United States experience a housing and mortgage market boom and bust in the 2000s, while analogous Canadian markets were relatively stable? Both US and Canadian markets are replete with government interventions. In this paper, I account for the US and Canada’s different experiences...

We explore the relationship between economic freedom and inequality. We employ the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) index and country-level (i) decile income shares, (ii) decile income levels, and (iii) Gini coefficients. We address concerns for endogeneity and...

Scholars have argued that the politically fractured landscape of medieval Western Europe was foundational to the evolution of constitutionalism and rule of law. In making this argument, Salter and Young (2019) have recently emphasized that the constellation of political property rights in the...

Do the antitrust law enforcement activities of the US Department of Justice act as exogenous "technology shocks", an essential element of real business cycle theory that hitherto has eluded direct empirical corroboration, or as "markup shocks" limiting market power and promoting economic...