Political economy is a field of study where theorists typically treat polities and markets as separate orders of activity within society. Moreover, the standard mode of analysis treats those entities as existing in states of equilibrium. To the contrary, this essay treats polities and markets as...

The statement by the central bank of Nigeria that N5000 will be introduced and N5, N10, and N20 notes will be coined in 2013 has generated a lot of debate. Many of the contributions have however strayed off the key point. Namely, the reason currency notes and coins are necessary. Notes and coins...

This work rehearses the main themes of Piketty's book and summarizes the debate it triggered. The paper dwells on the rise in the ratio of household wealth to GDP in the rich countries since the 1980s and the role played by the build-up of saving and variations in house and financial asset...

I have been asked to compare James Buchanan's body of work with that of George Stigler for a symposium on Stigler's contributions to economics. I run my exposition through Frank Knight, who exerted strong though different forms of influence over both Stigler and Buchanan. Stigler's oeuvre is...

Few social scientists have equaled the impact on political science of Douglass C. North, co-winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1993. His extraordinary influence emanated from his ideas but was also a result of his vast social network of collaborators, students, and friendly...

Adam Smith proposed three contradictory theories of the British Empire in the Wealth of Nations. The first view holds that the empire was created for merchants eager to monopolize the colonial trade. Smith concludes that “Great Britain derives nothing but loss” from the colonies. In the...

George Stigler’s “The Theory of Economic Regulation” (1971) is a landmark in the economics of regulation. It used simple public choice reasoning to set out the “capture theory” of regulation whereby “… as a rule, regulation is acquired by the industry and is designed and operated...

Program conditionality and ownership are important considerations in the IMF`s current rethinking of program design. This paper contributes to the literature by developing a theory of program conditionality and ownership on the basis of Cumulative Prospect Theory. The policymaker may value a set...