Many state and local government officials seem bedazzled by visions of tourists paying for entertainment and leisure attractions in such magnitude that significant economic development benefits will flow from these “smokestack-less” businesses. Public officials turn to a variety of public...

Policy processes evolve in highly institutionalized environments, and policy effects are generally shaped by these environments. Policy outcomes could therefore be expected to be patterned and even predictable. In practice, however, prediction of policy outcomes is difficult. In part this lack...

Economies of scale exist if long-run average costs decline as output rises. All else being equal, the decline in average costs should lead to greater profitability, making economies of scale attractive to businesses. Nobel laureate George Stigler recognized that economies of scale should help...

I present a theoretical account of the politics of privatization that predicts left-wing support for the policy is conditional on the proportionality of the electoral system. In contrast to accounts that see privatization as an inherently right-wing policy, I argue that, like trade policy, it...

Social capital depicts the extent of mutual trust in a jurisdiction. This study examines the impact of social capital on nonprofit density and provides evidence that the social capital of a county is positively associated with the growth of nonprofit density in the county. The total number of...

Federal tax law has long provided a tax benefit for charitable contributions of easements for conservation purposes. A fundamental problem with this conservation easement tax expenditure is that the measure for the tax benefit – lost economic development value – is erroneous. Use of such an...

It is common for scholars to describe institutions as “rules of the game.” This description entails a separation between a society and its rules. Social change thus results as societies amend their framing rules. This paper explores that common treatment of institutions as rules with a...

This is the first and only casebook geared entirely to the study of access to government, or freedom of information law, in the United States. Unlike other treatments that focus exclusively on the federal FOIA or on statutory FOI, this book takes a broader approach, recognizing that...

Although institutions rooted in the folk theorem can support self-enforcing exchange in a wide variety of contexts, their potential to create cooperation is not limitless. In particular, the folk theorem may break down when some agents are physically stronger than others. I demonstrate this in...

Frey [2001] and others propose subjecting governments to competition within their jurisdiction, but classical liberals argue that having competing law enforcers cannot work. This article describes a hybrid system that relies on markets but has one law enforcement agency per region, with profit...