This paper explores the meaning of the idea of common good as used in the classical political tradition in order to study its role in the present political economy. It first analyses the received meaning of the term ‘‘common good’’ in economics with the help of a brief sketch of its...

The literature existing on entrepreneurship implicitly assumes that entrepreneurship and government and economic growth are positively related with each other and there is a positive correlation among them. However, few studies, whether theoretical or empirical, analyze such relation in an...

Explicit economic incentives designed to increase contributions to public goods and to promote other pro-social behavior sometimes are counterproductive or less effective than would be predicted among entirely self-interested individuals. This may occur when incentives adversely affect...

For over a decade, I have been promoting a Free To Choose Medicine (FTCM) initiative in op-eds, journal articles, interviews, and monographs. FTCM would break the FDA's monopoly on access to new drugs. It would enable patients, advised by their doctors, to make informed decisions about using...

The logic of people's capitalism is explained from the giant contradiction between the assumptions of economics and those of non-ego based behavior. Current social scientific research provides enough of the theory, facts, and figures necessary for various methods, many inter-related, by which...

This article reviews the distribution of income and wealth in the US from three basic perspectives that tend to be otherwise overlooked if the subject is framed primarily on the basis of the gross statistics: a) quantity and quality of work effort; b) quantity and quality of capital...

The U.S. drugs-to-patients system fails to achieve its overall system goal of better drugs, sooner, at lower cost. The key constraint that impedes achieving this goal is the FDA's enormously expensive and time consuming clinical testing process. Fixing this constraint should be a strategic...

This paper makes the argument that certain public goods (those lacking special interest backing) are likely to be under-provided by governments. Moreover, some such goods are complementary with private goods (e.g. roads and automobiles), while other such goods are substitutes for private goods...

A primary, but typically unacknowledged, function of government action - whether it be new laws, the inauguration of new leaders, the establishment of new agencies, or the funding allocated to existing agencies - is to show what the people "approve of." Government praise is an asset that the...