The present paper begins by outlining a theoretical, rational- choice approach to understanding how religious beliefs and affiliations might influence the behavior of individuals. This influence arises from an expectation that the god in question punishes certain forms of action and from social...

How does economic freedom, mainly how property rights are designed and protected, relate to income equality? Whilst this is argued to be theoretically ambiguous, the empirical results reveal that there is a positive relationship between changes in economic freedom and equality: the more a...

The generality principle, advocated by Buchanan and Congleton (1998), requires that political decisions treat all citizens equally qua citizens. The effects of implementing such a constitutional rule on lobbying, public expenditures, economic efficiency, and disposable incomes are explored. The...

The generality principle advocated by Buchanan and Congleton (1998), stating that only legislation which treats all citizens equally as citizens is permissible, is normally motivated on contractarian grounds. It is shown that the generality principle can also be motivated on...

According to many democracy theorists, there is an unavoidable trade-off between constitutionalism and the need for political action. This paper criticizes that belief. Rather, it argues that a division of power, while sometimes entailing high political transaction costs, can nevertheless be...

Classical liberalism stresses the desirability of free markets, limited government and the rule of law. As such, it builds on some moral judgments. According to ethical objectivism, such judgments (in themselves always personal and subjective) can be true or false since objective moral facts...

Scholars such as Friedrich Hayek and Aleksander Peczenik have criticized legal positivism for undermining constitutionalism and the rule of law, an implication of which is weakened private property rights. This conclusion is far from evident. First, I contend that legal positivism is compatible...

One of the major questions in economics is what causes the growth of wealth. What explains that some countries experience higher economic growth than others and hence, ultimately, that some countries are rich, while others are poor? The idea here is to explore the link between political...

In the main, Hayek favored rules that apply equally to all and located such rules in tradition, beyond conscious construction. This led Hayek to attack Keynes’s immoralism, i.e., the position that one should be free to choose how to lead one’s life irrespective of the informal institutions...

Recently, the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Calculus of Consent, the monumental work by James Buchanan and Gordon Tullock providing logical foundations of constitutional democracy, occurred. The main aim of the book is scientific, but I claim that it also provides insights that can...