Economists have addressed the effect of taxes on a polity, with several economists then using their findings to justify the implementation of various tax schemes. These theories are loosely based on the ideas of fiscal philosophers from the end of the 19th century, with recent work demonstrating...

This paper identifies two broad strands of fiscal theorizing which date back to the late 19th century in the persons of Knut Wicksell (1896) and Francis Edgeworth (1897). From Edgeworth descends the treatment of public finance as a branch of applied statecraft, as conveyed these days largely...

This paper provides a model of employee immolation and provides a case study of the effect that public influences on corporate policy has on the welfare of employees. Conventional wisdom would suggest that efforts to improve the lives of workers within oppressive labor conditions would be viewed...

What is the place of political parties within a democratic system of political economy? Parties are often described as intermediaries that lubricate the political process by facilitating the matching of voter preferences with candidate positions. This line of analysis flows from a bi-planar...

This paper seeks to provide a sketch of a micro-level explanation of public finance. De Viti De Marco (1936) and Buchanan (1949) provide initial starting points for understanding this view of public finance, which was subsequently extended by Wagner (1992, 2007a) and Yoon (2000), among others....

Monetary authorities around the world have promised a safer money and that they would use this new authority to prevent future economic calamities. This claim has been met with abject failure throughout the history of central banks. Two questions emerge from: why do central bankers almost...

Today, the debate about public indebtedness has reached a fervor not often seen among professional economists and the general public. This has renewed considerations of requiring Congress to balance its budget, through either a Constitutional amendment or some other legislative or statutory...

Civics students from time immemorial have been taught that there is a strict hierarchy within legislative bodies. In the case of the United States, this view would suggest that Congress is at the center of all legislative decisions and that Congress is responsible for all legislative decisions...

Traditional public choice analysis implicitly views political outcomes as the intention of a single-minded person. This view is seriously misguided. Rather than viewing politics as being done by one person or a group of persons acting in concert, this paper presents an Austrian economist's...

Tullock (2005, p. 160) notes that the perceived robust relationship between democracy and economic progress is due mostly to assumption, rather than analysis. Taking up Tullock's challenge to consider the relationship between economic progress and other political forms, we re-assess the...