It has been observed by many that Jorgenson and Griliches' findings have profound implications about the nature and prospects of economic development. In this paper, the author proposes to show that Jorgenson and Griliches' evidence does not bear these implications, and that the inferences drawn...

Patents raise the price and reduce consumption of the patented good, but the resulting deadweight loss is thought to be worth bearing when patent protection is required as an incentive to invention. The newly-invented good generates a residual surplus, making people better off than they would be...

The incentive to advertise is a consequence of monopoly power, for there is nothing to gain from advertising by a firm that can sell its entire output at an invariant market price. Advertising is expenditure by a firm to increase the elasticity of demand for its product or to shift the demand...

The liberal society might be supposed to have emerged directly from anarchy, spontaneously or in a social contract; or the liberal society might be supposed to have emerged indirectly by a roundabout process in which anarchy gave way in the first instance to despotism and then despotism gave way...

Justification of private property may be rights-based or needs-based. One may believe that society with private ownership of a significant part of the means of production is good or just in itself, or one may believe that a society with private ownership of a significant part of the means of...

A distribution of income between rulers and subjects, or among ranks in a ruling hierarchy, cannot be derived from considerations of marginal products of owned factors of production. Such a distribution can be derived as a balance of income and violence. Society is organized in ranks, and the...

Economists do not understand how bargains are struck. A bargain is the sharing of a pie between two or more people who are collectively entitled to the pie but cannot appropriate it until they agree how large each person's slice is to be. We know that people do strike bargains and that civilized...