It is not fruitful to puzzle over the question whether economists and others ‘favor’ or ‘lean’ toward the regulatory or welfare state; that is an unhelpful and confusing question, one that orients people in the wrong way. It is better to begin by emphasizing that the first should be...

This essay takes issue with the idea that liberals are necessarily enamored with either regulation or large government programs. It argues that regulations to protect workers and consumers become necessary in a context where the rules have been written to disadvantage them. Different rules can...

This paper argues that the welfare state and regulation are not inevitably in harmony. In the post-Keynesian period of ‘austerity,’ the tendency is for state regulation to focus more on supporting market-creating activities of capital than of market-controlling features that would protect...

Economists view activist government policy and social insurance as potentially protecting individuals from risks and from market failure. Perhaps differences among economists in support for activist government policy in social insurance and regulation reflect differences in beliefs about the...

I suggest that the growing divide between economists on the left and right reflects three factors: epistemic differences (that is, differences in assessing empirical matters), values, and tribalism. I begin by sketching out a simple model to explain the epistemic divide between economists on the...

In the United States, on matters of the welfare state and the regulatory state, virtually no economist favors one while opposing the other. Such pattern is a common and intuitive impression, and is supported by scatterplots of survey data. But what explains the pattern? Why don’t some...

Turkey has experienced important institutional transformation during the last decades. A substantial part of this transformation is the establishment of independent regulatory authorities. Their independence from political power has attracted debate among the public from time to time. In 2011,...

In the autumn of 2014 the residents of Scotland, but not other parts of the UK, will vote on whether to leave the UK and to become a separate state, with a positive vote leading to an independent parliament expected to be elected in 2016. It would remain within the EU and in compliance with its...

The realization of investments into the long-run growth rate of GDP requires the institutions of industrial policy, which would ensure search and implementation of its effective recipes. Such institutions and recipes are discussed in the article. Principles of effective governance for...

Exploiting the unique economic situation after German unification, I investigate how exit decisions deviate between new firms in a transition and a comparatively stable market environment. Two competing exit mechanisms are considered: entrepreneurial self-selection via voluntary liquidation and...