Today, Karl Marx is considered one of the preeminent social scientists of the last two centuries, and ranks among the most frequently assigned authors in university syllabi. However in Marx's time, many competing sociological traditions and socialist political movements espoused similar ideas...

The theory of state capacity predicts that states with powerful abilities—as long as they are constrained—can promote economic growth if these abilities are used to support market development. Some scholars, especially in economic history, argue that post offices are a proxy forgovernment...

Tullock identified resources invested in acquiring rents as socially wasteful. Several authors have argued that this identification is value-laden and normative, resting on interpersonal comparisons of utility, measurement of subjective opportunity costs, and presumptions concerning the...

Several authors have argued that homeowners associations (HOAs) constitute an ideal institution for implementing Buchanan and Tullock's Calculus of Consent. HOAs provide collective goods and mitigate collective action problems. Developers offer constitutions ready-made, economizing on the...

The theory of state capacity predicts that states with powerful abilities - as long as they are constrained - can promote economic growth. Many scholars argue that post offices historically approximate state capacity and that they can be used to evaluate the state’s ability to promote...

George Orwell is famous for his two final fictions, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. These two works are sometimes understood to defend capitalism against socialism. But as Orwell was a committed socialist, this could not have been his intention. Orwell's criticisms were directed not...