We argue that in order to answer the challenges that James Buchanan put to contemporary political economists, a reconstruction of public choice theory building on the work of Buchanan, F.A. Hayek and Vincent Ostrom must take place. Absent such a reconstruction, and the significant challenges...

Classical Political Economy is characterized by the systemic study of economic forces. Primarily concerned with the dynamics of economic growth, the classical economists sought to explain how and why wealth is created and destroyed. Their study found the role of institutions central in answering...

F.A. Hayek focused on many traditional economic questions, and also made important contributions to law and economics. His framework differed from Kaldor Hicks efficiency and the wealth maximization norm common among neoclassical law and economics scholars. But he talked about how the common law...

Do capitalism and conflicts go hand in hand? Are the military and markets complements? Indeed, many conservative advocates of markets also passionately support the military, and many people who oppose war also oppose markets. Nineteenth-century writer Richard Cobden, however, maintained that the...

How much of economic theory can be derived using pure logic and how much of it depends on empirical facts? In a provocative article, Hülsmann (2003) criticizes Mises and Rothbard for relying on empirical assumptions, ceteris paribus claims, and thought experiments in their analysis. Instead,...