This paper discusses the nature of law as the fifth factor of production, or more fundamentally as the institutional framework within which the production process takes place. Unlike land, labor, capital, and entrepreneurship, whose coordination is an outcome of institutional arrangements, the...

In 1964 James Buchanan famously asked “What Should Economists Do?” He argued that economists should focus their intellectual attention on exchange and the institutions within which exchange takes place. This paper reflects on Buchanan’s message and looks at the development of that...

The science of economics is born out of the puzzle that the coordination of economic activities presents to our imagination. The solution to that puzzle is the entrepreneurial market process. Israel Kirzner has argued that the market economy operates with ruthless efficiency to coordinate...

Does the emergence of a stock market require a well-developed legal and/or regulatory system? Although historical work by Neal and Davis [Neal, L., & Davis, L. (2005). The evolution of the rules and regulations of the first emerging markets: The London, New York, and Paris stock exchanges,...

"F. A. Hayek's significant intellectual contribution to a number of scholarly disciplines was grounded in his critique of socialist economics. This article sets out how Hayek's critique of classical and market socialism led to the development of his wide-ranging research programme in the social...

"Efforts to export democracy and liberty through military intervention have often been ineffective and have resulted in unintended and undesirable consequences. Countries are free because of belief systems, and institutions that follow from those beliefs, which support and reinforce political...

John Searle has argued against the viability of strong versions of artificial intelligence. His most well-known counter-example is the Chinese Room thought experiment where he stressed that syntax is not semantics. We reason by analogy to highlight previously unnoticed similarities between...

Deirdre McCloskey’s Bourgeois Dignity (2010) represents another breakthrough work in her career, and the second volume in a multi-volume work on the economic and intellectual history of western civilization. In a sense, the subtitle of the book explains well what this volume is all about--why...

James Scott has written a detailed ethnography on the lives of the peoples of upland Southeast Asia who choose to escape oppressive government by living at the edge of their civilization. To the political economist the fascinating story told by Scott provides useful narratives in need of...