Carl Menger published Principles of Economics ([1871] 1976) 150 years ago in 1871, and he died 100 years ago in 1921 at the age of 81. Yet, what Joseph Schumpeter said of Menger after his death we could argue is still true today, “Menger is nobody's pupil and what he created stands”...

Firms spend operating costs to mitigate the risk of data breach events. However, firms may not know how much to spend to prevent data breach events with varying incidence frequencies. I present a model that estimates the relationship of breach prevention spending to breach incidence rates for...

Is "rule of law" anything more than a fictional allusion? After all, "law" is an abstract noun, and abstract nouns can't rule. Only people can rule. Rule of law is a fiction, one that has been around since ancient times. Whether, or under what circumstances, rule of law might be an ideal type...

This essay is written for a Festschrift to commemorate Jürgen Backhaus's contribution to law and economics in recognition of his long service as Editor of the European Journal of Law and Economics. Scholars of law and economics have long been intrigued by the possibility that legal processes...

This paper compares corruption in China over the past 15 years with corruption in the U.S. between 1870 and 1930, periods that are roughly comparable in terms of real income per capita. Corruption indicators for both countries and both periods are constructed by tracking corruption news in...

Regulation by the state can benefit or harm any business in society. While the market provides for consumers rather than special interests, rationally acting interests will be incentivized to use political means to capture rents, particularly if public clamor for regulation exists. The formation...

This paper uses the 19th century concern with “the social question” as a vehicle to explore how the theories we use can shape, for better or for worse, our insights into our subjects of interest. Contemporary thinking mostly channels the social question into a focus on inequality in the...

Drawing inspiration from Ross Emmett's (2006) imaginative construction of what Frank Knight might have thought about the Stigler-Becker formulation of Die Gustibus, I ask what Arthur Lovejoy (1936) might have thought about the origin of public choice. He would surely have denied that public...

I critically consider four purported economic-efficiency arguments for egalitarian redistribution of income or wealth. (1) Jeremy Bentham's “greatest aggregate happiness” criterion has been used (by Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Alfred Marshall, A. C. Pigou, Abba Lerner, and more recently...

This paper uses Alfred Marshall’s treatment of wants and activities and Francis Edgeworth’s treatment of utilitarian redistribution to re-examine what since the 19th century has been described as “the social question.” This comparative examination is prefaced by a distinction between...