This paper examines James Buchanan's earliest writings within the context of post-WWII public finance theory and his education at Chicago. Public choice scholars have long recognized their ties to Chicago, but few have examined Chicago's role serving as the primordial soup for Buchanan's later...

Undergraduate students are often interested in and benefit greatly from applications of economic principles. Although popular historical novels do not provide modern examples or business applications, they do draw from historical situations that can help engage students in economic concepts and...

We use meta-regression analysis to investigate the extent and nature of the gender gap - that male students outperform otherwise equivalent female students in economics courses. We survey 65 studies containing 279 distinct regressions from the past 30 years and conclude that the gender gap is...

This paper examines the institutionalization of public finance as a subfield of economics in American universities from the founding of professional academic economics departments in the 1880's through the eve of the Great Depression. To do so, we examine the development of a community of...

This paper extends a long tradition of Western analyses of Russian economic thought on Keynes, updating the story through the period that followed the global financial crisis of 2007-2008. We survey contemporary views of Keynesianism by mainstream and traditionalist economists and consider the...

In their recent book Where Economics Went Wrong, David Colander and Craig Freedman (2018) argue that economics went wrong when it abandoned the Classical liberal firewall that demanded separation of scientific theory from the art of policy making. Colander has long advanced the idea that applied...

Alvin Hansen and John Williams' Fiscal Policy Seminar at Harvard University is widely regarded as a key mechanism for the spread of Keynesianism in the United States. An original and regular participant, Richard A. Musgrave was invited to prepare remarks for the 50th anniversary of the seminar...

No individual in the history of public economics has been subject to more contentious discussion than Knut Wicksell – and perhaps no concept subjected to more diverse interpretation than Wicksell's unanimity rule. The story begins in 1896 with the publication of Wicksell's public finance...

This paper identifies three major shifts that happened in public finance that explain the radical changes in theory and practice witnessed between the start of the Great Depression and the end of the Second World War. These included (1) the replacement of philosophical considerations of...

Containment strategies for invasive species often require significant changes in behavior. Success in fostering these changes requires that individuals correctly perceive the costs and benefits. Yet, while both the ecological and aesthetic impacts of some invasive species are universally...