This paper explores Milton Friedman's views on conditional lending by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Conditional lending by international financial institutions, which began with a few IMF stand-by arrangements in the 1950s and grew to include extensive World Bank structural adjustment...

Public choice theory coalesced into a school of thought in Charlottesville, Virginia, in the late 1950s and early 1960s at a time when the commonwealth was embroiled in a fight over school segregation. Until very recently, the history of segregation has not informed our understanding of the...

This paper develops a generalized maximum entropy (GME) approach to propensity score matching (PSM). A GME discrete choice model is used to develop propensity scores and estimate treatment effects in a set of Monte Carlo simulations. The GME PSM is compared to a more traditional logit PSM....

Mankiw, Romer, and Weil's (1992) seminal paper on growth empirics memorably begins with “this paper takes Robert Solow seriously”. In a similar way, this paper takes Thomas Piketty seriously. Mankiw, Romer, and Weil argued that Solow's (1956) simple growth model maintained relevance in the...

James Buchanan, one of the founders of public choice theory and constitutional economics, began his career studying fiscal federalism in the doctoral program at the University of Chicago. This paper explores Buchanan’s early interest in Australian experiences with federation and...