This paper provides an explanation for the lack of profit-maximizing governments and for widespread use of more or less representative forms of local governance based on economic, rather than political, considerations. The analytical part of the paper suggests that profit-maximizing governments...

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...

To what extent do politicians reward voters who are members of their own ethnic or racial group? Using data from large cities in the United States, we study how black employment outcomes are affected by changes in the race of the cities’ mayors between 1971 and 2003. We find that black...

This paper explores a possible path toward dissolving an antinomy within political economy: market order is treated as emergent and spontaneous while political order is treated as planned. This paper pursues a path that seeks to locate the entire social order as emergent and spontaneous. Where a...

This paper discusses the unique features of Austrian economics and some of the recent contributions of this school of thought. We organize these contributions in different research “buckets” in the hope that this will be a useful guide to readers while demonstrating the ongoing relevance of...

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...

This paper reconceptualizes and unbundles the relationship between public predation, state capacity, and economic development from a constitutional perspective. By reframing our understanding of state capacity theory from a constitutional perspective, we argue that to the extent there is a...

Following the start of the war on terror in 2001, U.S. policymakers determined that winning the war on drugs in Afghanistan was necessary for winning the war on terror. Yet despite spending $8.4 billion on drug interdiction in Afghanistan since 2002, opium production has grown substantially. We...

The American system of political economy surely faces a fiscal crisis illustrated by but not limited to a trend of growing deficits and debt that cannot continue. What can’t continue won’t continue. In what fashion change occurs will be governed by forthcoming interactions between power and...