The Homo economicus of traditional economics is far from being completely self-interested, rational, or as individualistic as he is purported to be; he will haggle to death over price but will not take what he wants by force. Implicitly, he is assumed to behave ruthlessly within a welldefined...

The of traditional economics is far from being completely self-interested, rational, or as individualistic as he is purported to be; he will haggle to death over price but will not take what he wants by force. Implicitly, he is assumed to behave ruthlessly within a well-defined bubble of...

Contrary to modern democracies ancient Athens appointed large numbers of government officers by lot. After describing the Athenian arrangements, the paper reviews the literature on the choice between election and lot focusing on representativeness of the population, distributive justice,...

The various subdisciplines within the emerging ‘new institutionalism’ in economics all draw special attention to the legal-political constraints within which economic and political agents choose. By changing the name of his research programme to Constitutional Political Economy Buchanan...

Despite much theoretical discussion the enforceability of constitutional constraints, the question has received little empirical attention. After discussing the theoretical arguments for and against the proposition that constitutions are capable of protecting individual liberty against...

Legislative misbehavior is best curbed through rational legislating requirements, whereby legislators must include in the legislative record an explicit elaboration of the path of lawmaking - from evidence, through findings, to ultimate conclusions - that clearly sets out the analytic connection...