Is capitalism contagious? Since WWI, global foreign policy has treated economic freedom/repression like a virus that spreads between countries. Most recently, the ?domino theory? of freedom has played prominently in U.S. foreign policy toward Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean during the...

Could bad weather be responsible for U.S. corruption? This paper argues that natural disasters create resource windfalls in the states they strike by triggering federally-provided natural disaster relief. Consistent with the theory that natural resource and foreign aid windfalls increase public...

To successfully coordinate natural disaster relief, society must solve Hayek’s “knowledge, problem” at three critical information nodes: (1) identification of disaster; (2) determination of what relief is needed and who needs which relief resources; and (3) evaluation of on-going relief...

We examine the US state-level pattern of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) spending. We relate spending to (1) Keynesian determinants of countercyclical policy, (2) congressional power and dominance, and (3) presidential electoral vote importance. We find that the ARRA is, in...

The sum of two independent random variables with normal and half normal densities has a skew-normal density (Azzalini, 1985). In this note we show that this skew-normal density satisfies all assumptions required in establishing the asymptotic properties of the estimators discussed in...

The international development community has encouraged investment in physical and human capital as a precursor to economic progress. Recent evidence shows, however, that increases in capital do not always lead to increases in output. We develop a growth model where the allocation and...

This paper applies the ideas found in the work of Adam Smith, the preeminent 18th century economist, to the field of management. Adam Smith was the first person to identify specialization and the division of labor as the main drivers of productivity. He also conceptualized the 'invisible hand...

In the economic development literature, cultural diversity (for example, ethnolinguistic fractionalization) has been shown to have a negative impact on economic outcomes in many underdeveloped countries. We hypothesize that the impact of diversity on economic performance depends on the quality...

We investigate the stability properties of Muth's model of price movements when agents choose a production level using replicator dynamic learning. It turns out that when there is a discrete set of possible production levels, possible stable states and stability conditions differ between...

We consider the estimation of a nonparametric stochastic frontier model with composite error density which is known up to a finite parameter vector. Our primary interest is on the estimation of the parameter vector, as it provides the basis for estimation of firm specific (in)efficiency. Our...