The political economy of Ludwig von Mises and Frederic Bastiat has been largely ignored even by their admirers. We argue that Mises' and Bastiat's views in this area were both original and insightful. While traditional public choice generally maintains that democracy fails because voters' views...

There is a tension between libertarians’ optimism about private supply of public goods and skepticism of the viability of voluntary collusion (Cowen 1992, Cowen and Sutter 1999). Playing off this asymmetry, Cowen (1992) advances the novel argument that the “free market in defense services”...

The greatest obstacle to sound economic policy is not entrenched special interests or rampant lobbying, but the popular misconceptions, irrational beliefs, and personal biases held by ordinary voters. This is economist Bryan Caplan's sobering assessment in this provocative and eye-opening book....

Donald Wittman's "Why Democracies Produce Efficient Results," argues that the "markets work, democracy fails" outlook typical of many economists rests on bad economics. After summarizing Wittman's main arguments, I maintain that Wittman too hastily accepts the assumption of voter rationality....

WITTMAN HAS WRITTEN A CHARACTERISTICALLY ENGAGING response to my critique. While he emphasizes his continued disagreement with me, I am struck by the important concessions he makes. In particular, he has virtually abandoned the rational expectations assumption that drives his trademark results....

Critics of behavioral economics often argue that apparent irrationality arises mainly because test subjects lack adequate incentives; the defenders of behavioral economics typically reply that their findings are robust to this criticism. The current paper presents a simple theoretical model of...

We develop a critique of the single-tax proposal of Henry George. We present a simple search-theoretic model for the discovery of natural resources and show that a tax on the unimproved value of land is distortionary. We then consider the time inconsistency and regime uncertainty problem created...

Must the state handle the adjudication of disputes? Researchers of different perspectives, from heterodox scholars of law who advocate legal pluralism to libertarian economists who advocate privatizing law, have increasingly questioned the idea that the state is, or should be, the only source of...