The Austrian contribution to the development of law and economics is the study of endogenous rule formation, or the spontaneous evolution of social institutions, which can be traced to the founder of the Austrian School, Carl Menger. While Menger's emphasis on spontaneous institutional analysis...

A successful transition involves balancing a decisive break with the previous regime with the simultaneous minimization of the costs associated with the administration of justice. Where the benefits of pursuing transitional justice outweigh the associated costs, the administration of justice is...

James M. Buchanan has argued that the primary role that the economist plays in society is a pedagogical one. The job of the economists is to teach students the principles of economics, most notably an understanding of spontaneous order and the role of the price system in generating that order...

What can we learn about applied price theory from the Bourgeois Era? In this paper, we contend there are three important lessons that can be extracted from McCloskey's work on the Great Enrichment. First, transaction costs are not constraints, but objects of choice. Second, property rights are...

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...

Attempting to find the technically optimal monetary policy is futile if the Fed's independence is undermined by political influences. Nobel Laureates F.A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, and James Buchanan each sought ways to constrain and/or safeguard the Fed from political pressures over their...

The authors highlight under-appreciated problems with implementing a Basic Income Policy, even in the case of simple cash transfers which, given the existence of redistribution, are preferable to the bureaucratic machinery necessary for rationing specific goods

The growing preoccupation with identity within public discourse raises important questions concerning its effects on democratic governance. Building on the work of James M. Buchanan, we hope to show that:1) the logic of identity politics raises costs to political cooperation, 2) the phenomenon...

Elinor Ostrom (1933–2012) influenced fields ranging from institutional analysis to metropolitan service delivery, from federalism and theories of polycentric orders to common-pool resource management and sustainable development. Her seminal book, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of...

In the 2011 Franz Cuhel Memorial Lecture, I argue of endogenous rule formation in economic life (what I term the positive political economy of anarchism) should be studied in-depth and that the economic analysis of the Austrian school of economics provides many of the key analytical insights...