The evaluation of policy-relevant economic research requires an ethical foundation.Classical liberal theory provides the requisite foundation for this dissertation, which usesvarious econometric tools to estimate the effects of shifting some of the property tax frombuildings to land in 15 cities...

There are three separate strands of literature in economics that are related to the efficiency of takings under eminent domain: one addresses the question of optimal compensation for properties that are taken, a second inquires how governments might learn the values of properties that they...

Two commonly-used criteria for evaluating voting rules are how infrequently the rules provide opportunities for strategic voting and how infrequently they encounter voting paradoxes. The lack of ranking data from enough actual elections to determine these frequencies with reasonable accuracy...

Given the connectedness of most states with their neighbors, any economic analysis of changes in a state's policy needs to account for the interdependence between states. We examine in how much detail one needs to model the factor and commodity flows between states, and how much, if anything, is...