In September 2009, the editors of this special issue organized at Lausanne University a Workshop on the History of Russian Political Economy and Statistics at the turn of the 20th century. When preparing a call for paper for this journal, the editors realized that papers presented at the...

European Enlightenment thinkers were right in stressing the political dimension of inequality, rather than referring to "natural differences" as some others did after them in the 19th or 20th centuries. Drawing from recent theoretical and empirical contributions in social sciences and in...

European Enlightenment thinkers were right in stressing the political dimension of inequality, rather than referring to "natural differences" as some others did after them in the 19th or 20th centuries. Drawing from recent theoretical and empirical contributions in social sciences and in...

This paper examines the recent evolution of the Australian economics curriculum. First, it examines 2011 survey evidence produced by the Economic Society of Australia that shows that the Australian economics profession wishes to see a broadening and updating of what is taught. These findings are...

Peasant livestock producers are particularly disadvantaged internationally and within their national systems because their political participation tends to be mediated through patron-client ties. The consequence is that poor producers most often trade their collective interests for very modest...

This Paper designs a political economy model of invasive species management in order to explore the effectiveness of tariffs in mitigating the risk of invasion. The revenue interests of the government together with the interests of the lobby group competing with the imported agricultural...

The fact that trade, and especially agricultural trade, remains far from free is puzzling, since the superiority of free trade receives overwhelming support among economists (Gawande and Krishna, 2003; Rodrik, 1994). International trade scholars have devoted significant resources to forecasting the...

Global food commodity price inflation beginning in 2006 and continuing through mid-2008 became a priority concern for global consumers, producers and policy-makers alike. In response, many governments across the world implemented policies targeting high food commodity prices in their domestic...

We consider a moral hazard economy in banks and production to study how incentives for risk taking are affected by the quality of supervision. We show that low interest rates may generate excessive risk taking. Because of a pecuniary externality, the market equilibrium may not be optimal and...

This article tests the Grossman-Helpman Protection for Sale model using panel data from U.S. food processing industries with endogenous protection, imports, and political organization of industries. The results support the key predictions of the model: organized industries are granted higher...