Interpretations of David Ricardo's (and Adam Smith's) tax theory are presently dominated by an Anglo-Saxon perspective, though French physiocrats also played a role in its formation. Recent studies on economic thought often include a look at the historical precedents of a theory. This has given...

Interpretations of David Ricardo's (and Adam Smith's) tax theory are presently dominated by an Anglo-Saxon perspective, though French physiocrats also played a role in its formation. Recent studies on economic thought often include a look at the historical precedents of a theory. This has given...

We present a theory of the choice of alternative democratic constitutions, a majoritarian or a consensual one, in an unequal society. A majoritarian democracy redistributes resources from the collectivity toward relatively few people, and has a relatively small government and low level of...

In this paper we compare the classical general equilibrium framework of Smith and Marx with the neoclassical one of Arrow and Debreu, and find that these competing paradigms of equilibrium clash on a number of critical issues--efficiency, power, the role of markets, time, the nature of...

We start out from the hypothesis that limited government leads to low uncertainty and low transaction costs. If political institutions affect the degree of uncertainty and transaction costs, we formally show they should affect the steady state level of income per capita. The impact of...