We take for granted that the basic choice in public policy is between allocation of resources by government bureaucracy, on the one hand, or allocation by markets, on the other. But that dichotomy is false, and at least under contemporary circumstances it is more accurate to describe the choice...

This paper provides an explanation for the lack of profit-maximizing governments and for widespread use of more or less representative forms of local governance based on economic, rather than political, considerations. The analytical part of the paper suggests that profit-maximizing governments...

This paper examines how financial reporting regulations affect, and respond to, macroeconomic cycles by exploring a positive framework in which regulators subject to political pressures respond to cyclical demands by borrowers and lenders. We establish that, as economic conditions initially...

This paper explores the constitutional political economy and history of economic liberalization in China, with the aim of understanding how and why the policies that produced that growth came to be adopted. The paper argues that constitutional reforms played important roles in China's economic...

Why are we rich and others poor? What is preventing the less-developed countries from catching up with the more developed? How did we become rich? Underlying these questions are more fundamental ones: What is the nature of economic progress? What are its causes? I seek the answers to these...

We investigate the determinants of public support for EU membership using a panel of fifteen countries over the 1974 - 2008 period. The results indicate that increases in inflation and unemployment rate generate a decrease in support for EU membership, while growth of GDP growth increases...

This is a Powerpoint presentation. The full article is also available on ssrn at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1924831U.S. policymakers often treat market competition as a panacea. However, in the case of mortgage securitization, policymakers' faith in competition is misplaced. Competitive mortgage...

Sandy struck a strategically important city in a strategically important country within days of a strategically important election. Climate justice has many synergistic and sometimes competing dimensions. Irrespective of the degree to which climate change contributes to any given weather event,...

History has shown that crisis often serves as a condition precedent to social and regulatory reform. Since the 1990s, the public interest has also taken an advanced role in these reforms. As we have grown in scientific, technological, and economic sophistication, the public has increasingly...

Hydraulic fracturing has been a game changer for the energy field, bringing to mind the “nothing in excess” carving at Delphi. Whether heeding ancient oracles or cutting-edge principles of calibration, I argue that dynamic governance innovation can facilitate climate-energy-water balancing...