The economic science has - lamented by some, applauded by others - turned into a monistic discipline. In this short research note, a socio-economic answer to the question of why this happened is provided by combining an economic approach to the market for economic ideas with a sociological...

While the tradeoff between market failure and government failure has been explored both theoretically and in practical policy design, the question of whether this trade-off appears in the calculus of citizens' demands for government regulation remains underexplored. We first clarify the channels...

Labor markets in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) are characterized by high levels of informality and relatively rigid regulation. This paper shows that these two features are related and together make the speed of adjustment of employment to shocks slower, especially when regulations are...

The IRS recently announced that its mandatory registration regime for paid tax return preparers, struck down in the Loving decision, would henceforth be offered as a voluntary program. But the authors of this program appear to have forgotten that the US system is perfectly global in reach,...

Are regulators biased? I show that in-group biases affect patent grant decisions, using a novel hand-collected biographical dataset on examiners at the United States Patent and Trademark Office. I find that examiners are more likely to grant patents to inventors from their own racial group or...

The frontiers of power are changing. Or at least this is what we are compelled to conclude when we see how transformations in local, inter- and transnational politico-economic relations have caused unprecedented relationships in the contemporary world. This is evident in instances of mass...

Flexible labor markets require geographically mobile workers to be efficient. Otherwise, firms can take advantage of the immobility of workers and extract monopsony rents. In cultures with strong family ties, moving away from home is costly. Thus, individuals with strong family ties rationally...

While the tradeoff between market failure and government failure has been explored both theoretically and in practical policy design, the question of whether this trade-off appears in the calculus of citizens’ demands for government regulation remains underexplored. We first clarify the...