Economic theory contains a significant theoretical antinomy that we seek to erase. That theory can account for coordination through markets. Such coordination, however, covers only some 50-60 percent of economic activity within developed nations. The theory ignores the remainder by presuming...

Should projects funded with taxpayer money be discounted at a lower rate than privately funded projects? I analyze the discount rate applied to long-term cash flows in public (in-house) versus private (contracting out) provision of public goods subject to regulatory burdens. I develop a model...

This paper combines insights from Ludwig von Mises about the mixed economy and Vilfredo Pareto about non-logical action within a social system to explore some intertemporal dynamics of an entangled system of political economy. Mises explained the inherent instability of the mixed economy. Pareto...

The paper presents comparative statics of organizational modes of natural monopoly in public utilities with a focus on co-ownership and co-governance. Private monopoly lowers output and increases price to maximize profit; public monopoly incurs higher costs due to the lack of know-how; and a...

It has become commonplace to describe publicly-provided infrastructure as being in a sorry state, and to advance public-private partnership as a possible remedy. This essay adopts a skeptical but not a cynical posture toward those claims. The paper starts by reviewing the comparative properties...

Economic theory contains a significant theoretical antinomy. Markets are thought to secure coordination in self-organized fashion. In contrast, polities are portrayed as securing coordination through planning and administration. Doing this is to commit what Mitchel Resnick (1994) calls the...

I test whether public-sector ownership reduces conventional measures of market risk by using an exogenous event to the air transportation industry. I find that government-sponsored enterprises show lower price volatility than non-government-sponsored enterprises, arguably due to the government's...

Expositions of the theory of public finance mostly presume that taxation will be the primary instrument for generating revenues. While this presumption is historically accurate, it does not so much reflect historical necessity as it reflects a combination of power and ideology. Cities are...

States have soft budget constraints when they can expect a bailout by the federal government in the event of a financial crisis. This gives rise to incentives for unsound state fiscal policy. We test whether states with softer budget constraints have higher debts and deficits, receive more...

Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues in The Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University in Bloomington conducted fieldwork in metropolitan police departments across the United States. They found that small police departments with a high degree of community involvement were...