Western elites and the general public agree that foreign intervention is needed to halt the dramatic rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Policymakers hope to militarily defeat ISIS while also resolving the civil crises in Iraq and Syria that allowed the group to flourish. In the...

We investigate the effect of certificate-of-need (CON) laws on the quality of hospitals. As of 2015, 36 states and the District of Columbia required healthcare providers to seek approval from a state s healthcare regulator before making any major capital expenditures. These requirements restrict...

Policymakers behavioral economics toolbox contains both paternalistic and nonpaternalistic nudges. In the case of paternalistic nudges, policymakers identify the optimal choice for consumers and then push consumers toward that choice by setting default options or manipulating loss aversion. In...

This paper describes how to run and implement a game for teaching the principles of money and banking to an undergraduate economics class. The game primarily deals with the market for loanable funds, but numerous extensions to the base form of the game are provided that can illustrate things...

We examine the determinants of intra-U.S. population migration at the metropolitan area level (MSA), with an emphasis on the presence of policies that are consistent with economic freedom. We are the first to produce a multi-variate regression analysis of migration and economic freedom at the...

This note describes an approach to teaching the public choice perspectives on voting using an episode from Comedy Central's animated television show, South Park. The episode titled, “Douche and Turd,” demonstrates the near-zero value of an individual vote, the intrinsic value individuals...

In order to advance the economic theory on bureaucrats and bureaucracies, this study models the behavior of a bureaucrat who has imperfect information regarding his financier. This model reveals that if a bureaucrat is forced to cut spending, he will trim nonproductive “discretionary profit”...

This study examines voter turnout in U.S. presidential elections from 1960-2008. Specifically, this study contributes to the literature by using a panel spatial econometric model to investigate whether, on the margin, voters behave rationally (increased voter turnout) when the probability of...

This study develops a simple model for analyzing excise tax setting in a competitive framework. Then, this study utilizes a dynamic space-time panel econometric model to explore cigarette and beer tax rate setting from U.S. states from 1960-2007. The empirical findings support the model...