We argue James M. Buchanan's scholarship provides us an exemplary model for doing liberal political economy. Levy (2014) argues there are irreconcilable tensions within liberalism between rationalism and pluralism. Buchanan navigates these tensions in a way that powered one of the most important...

Contemporary monetary systems permit those in positions of authority to exercise discretionary power in the pursuit of monetary policy objectives. We argue there are strong prima facie reasons why this is normatively problematic. Engaging the literature on the rule of law, we argue that a...

Austrian economists are perhaps most well-known for developing the theory of the market process — how producers and consumers, guided by market prices, are able to coordinate their actions over time. In this paper we extend Austrian insights to the provision of fundamental governance goods. It...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to integrate classical elite theory into theories of constitutional bargains. Design/methodology/approach: Qualitative methods/surveys/case studies. Findings: Open-ended constitutional entrepreneurship cannot be forestalled. Constitutional entrepreneurs...

In The Pox of Liberty, Werner Troesken details the tradeoff between liberal institutions and communicable disease. According to Troesken, individual freedom presents a danger to the public health in the face of infectious disease, while constitutional constraints restrict the government’s...

F.A. Hayek argues that the best that economics can hope for is “explanation of the principle” of complex economic systems, arguing against the feasibility of precise prediction and thus of successful economic planning. However, subsequent work in economics, often under the heading of Market...

Criticisms of market outcomes often rest upon a notion of 'market failure,' meaning that the market has failed to align incentives and knowledge to produce an optimal outcome. Rejoinders to classic market failure arguments have taken several forms: that there are institutional or contracting...

Obesity in the US arguably constitutes the most significant health epidemic over the past century. Recent legislative changes allowing for recreational marijuana use further create a need to better understand the relationship between marijuana use and health choices, leading to obesity. We...