Over its long lifetime, "political economy" has had many different meanings: the science of managing the resources of a nation so as to provide wealth to its inhabitants for Adam Smith; the study of how the ownership of the means of production influenced historical processes for Marx; the study...

In final-offer arbitration the two parties to a dispute submit final offers to an arbitrator. The arbitrator then chooses as the binding solution that offer which is closest to his own view of the appropriate outcome. Because the disputants are imperfectly informed about the arbitrator's...

The optimal organization of the family requires that relations are structured so that non-cooperative game playing is minimized and transaction costs are reduced. I show that therapeutic advice for behavior within the family is to create a functioning property rights system. Punishment is shown...

There is a long-standing difference amongst public economists between those who think that collective choice must be formally acknowledged, and those who derive their policy recommendations from a social planning framework in which politics plays no role. The purpose of this book is to...

Do civil juries follow the broad dictates of the law? For example, do those plaintiffs who suffer greater damages receive greater awards? Are juries consistent? Do juries empty deep pockets? In many states automobile accidents are first tried by a professional arbitrator and then by a jury if...

IT IS ALWAYS A PLEASURE TO HAVE THE LAST WORD. I WILL NOT make a point-by-point counter-argument to Brian Caplan’s Rejoinder (2005b) because doing so would exhaust my patience, as well as the readers’ (but probably not Caplan’s). Instead, I will present some general...