Institutions matter: they affect individual action, influence cooperation and are crucial in making the difference between wealth and poverty, growth and stagnation. Yet, the explanatory power of modern institutional economics has not been exceedingly satisfactory. This paper criticizes the...

Di recente l’analisi austriaca del ciclo economico è stata oggetto di rinnovato interesse: contrariamente alla maggior parte delle analisi tradizionali, infatti, la visione originaria di Mises non spiega il ciclo richiamandosi a shock esogeni o a illusioni di cui sarebbero vittime gruppi di...

The Misesian lesson in a transition framework leads to a number of questions about the very aims pursued by individuals as they switched from the communist regime to a so-called capitalist environment. According to the answers provided, one may then understand why so many candidates to...

Although the importance of property rights as the engine of growth remains beyond dispute, this article tries to show that the crucial issue is not so much the definition of the allegedly ‘optimal’ property right system, as the understanding of the ideological elements that justify property...

By examining Hayek’s approach to economic policy, this paper tries to show that his understanding of a free-market society was ambiguous, if not contradictory. Hayek was indeed following the Austrian tradition by rejecting technocratic views of policy-making. Nevertheless, he advocated a...

This article considers corruption as a breach of contract between a principal and an agent. This does not necessarily imply that corruption is immoral, for the nature of the violation actually depends on the features of the underlying contract. In this light, under many circumstances corruption...

The recent crisis in public finance that has characterized most Western countries has stoked renewed interest in the possibility of reducing government expenditure by reforming the health-care system. After reviewing the origins of today’s state intervention in this field, the present paper...

We use a simple model to analyze the funding stage of new firms and characterize the directional causality between the ir capital structure and the length of prior working experience that entrepreneurs possess. In this light, we test a set of predictions by considering a sample of firms founded...

We use a simple model to analyze the founding stage of new firms. Our goal is to characterize the directional causality between the expected rewards from entrepreneurship and the length of prior labor market experience that entrepreneurs possess. We test predictions about the timing of the...

The principles underlying evolutionary psychology suggest an approach to Law and Economics that tends to reject top-down policy making and encourages a bottom-up stance, whereby rules lead to behavioral routines that are consistent with individuals’ shared psychological patterns. The view...