Georgia offers salary incentives for K-12 educators to obtain post-baccalaureate degrees, intending to improve student performance. In this paper, we evaluate the empirical relationship between advanced degrees earned by teachers and student pass rates on the state high school graduation test....

The Supreme Court in Kelo v. City of New London left protection of property against takings for economic development to the states. Since Kelo, thirty-seven states have enacted legislation to update their eminent domain laws. This paper is the first to theoretically and empirically analyze the...

This essay compares government takings in the United States with takings in lesser-developed countries. Lopez argues that institutional differences account for important disparities in when and how government takings emerge and in the distributional effects these takings have on the rich and...

Recent theoretical work has investigated the exact mechanism(s) by which the holdout problem creates inefficiency and thereby justifies eminent domain. In parallel, recent empirical work has demonstrated that state courts and legislatures either grant discretion to, or prohibit, local...

While Buchanan is best known for the economics of politics and constitutions, his seminal contributions to this field are but one branch of his more underlying methodology and approach to doing social science. Buchanan's fundamental project was to re-orient economics and social science toward an...

What explains the recent resurgence of appeal and popularity of socialism in the United States? Why especially do people today like socialism when history and economics are clear that socialism as actually practiced has had disastrous consequences? These questions are taken up in the book...

Using philosopher John Searle's framework as developed by Guala and Hindriks and by Caton and López, we propose a cognitive framework for economic and social theory. Searle's status function provides a grounding for a description of agent preferences. Agent preferences reflect valuations...