The public economic literature of the past century is characterized by a traditional paradigm that ascribes little attention to the spatial dimension. However, contemporary globalization requires that researchers and economists expand their perspectives to consider space conceptualization. What...

We analyze the time series of overnight returns for the bund and btp futures exchanged at liffe (London). The overnight returns of both assets are mapped onto a one–dimensional symbolic–dynamics random walk: The “bond walk”. During the considered period (October 1991—January 1994) the...

In spite of elaborate descriptive and correlational studies, the most ubiquitous phenomenon in economics, namely inflation, has remained unexplained in terms of its mathematical origins. Keynes had attempted to relate inflation to a mechanism of "sticky wages and prices". Hitherto, such theories...

In recent years, understanding the structure and function of complex networks has become the foundation for explaining many different real- world complex biological, technological and informal social phenomena. Techniques from statistical physics have been successfully applied to the analysis of...

The present paper explores why farmers are taxed in poor countries and subsidized in rich countries. Using the economic theory of contests to come to an understanding of the incentives for agricultural protectionism, we first sketch a framework for an excludable and rivalrous rent. We then apply...

Can the President or the Senate affect the balance of power in the House? We find that they can. Our answer comes from a model that links House leadership decisions to the constitutional requirement to build lawmaking coalitions with the Senate and President. Changing the ideal point of a...

Electoral constituencies recognize favorable policy outcomes in high- turnout jurisdictions (Key 1984 [1949]; Hamilton 1993; Fleck 1999). In the present paper, I evaluate whether underlying institutions might provide a finer explanation of this relationship. To do so, I formally examine variation in...

Economic organization of the imaginary worlds depicted in popular literary works may be viewed as a mirror to public opinion on the economic organization of life. If a book becomes a best-seller, it is because the book conveys messages, feelings, and events the readers can relate to. In other...

Economists often perceive the “ideological beliefs“ held by political actors as obstacles to rational policy-making. In contrast, it is argued that ideologies have characteristics that appear desirable in policy- making in that they allow political actors to credibly commit themselves to...

This article presents a formalization of knowledge based on a connectionist model of a firm's structure. Transaction costs are not ignored, but integrated with the knowledge-based approach. A numerical example on the canonical comparison of "Japanese" versus "American" organizational structures...