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...

Research on zoning typically assumes city planners aim to maximize housing prices with their land use decisions, either explicitly for public choice reasons or implicitly through the approval of land uses that create local net benefits. Noncongruence of school district and municipality borders...

We touch on three major pieces of syllabus language that we think can help young economists manage their economics classes in a liberal arts environment. Like the writing of a constitution, it is not enough to just copy the words on the page in order for them to be effective. Instead they must...

School district and municipal borders do not always align. Non-congruent borders can create a fiscal commons problem where new development does not entirely "pay its way." In response, frustrated citizens often respond by voting for lower school spending. Using GIS data on Ohio school districts,...

There has been considerable public debate surrounding the efficiency of higher education in the United States. Using Data Envelopment Analysis, we look at the efficiency of a majority of the institutions of higher learning in the United States. Using two different approaches, we find some...

We revisit the relationship between informal institutions and income levels. The empirical literature on institutions finds that indices of "informal institutions" such as trust, respect, respect, self-determination, and obedience are more important than "formal institutions" such as...

This paper discusses one approach to using writing assignments in an undergraduate public economics to get students actively involved in doing public choice. Our goal is to provide an overview of the course and its writing assignments with an emphasis on how the scaffolding of assignments helps...

Vedder and Gallaway (1991) develop and test a unique theory about the interactions between the levels of spending captured by rent-seeking interest groups. They hypothesize that initially rent seekers cooperate in ways that expand government spending and rents. At some point, however, groups can...

This paper provides an exploratory analysis into factors contributing to differences across states in recidivism rates. We provide the first such examination that incorporates differences in economic freedom. Using a panel data set from 1998-2010, we find that higher levels of economic freedom...

Drawing largely on educational literature outside of economics, we provide a survey of perspectives on alternative teaching methods. We then report results regarding the effectiveness of various alternative methods such as cooperative learning, class discussions, and the use of multimedia...