In this paper we draw on the literature on political property rights, political accountability, and strategic management and entrepreneurship to propose a cost neutral reform aimed at promoting long-run economic prosperity. We propose replacing politicians' defined benefit pensions with a...

We extend the literature on ‘monetary constitutions' by arguing that binding rules must go beyond specifying the behavior of the monetary authority. Instead, a genuine monetary constitution must also be a financial constitution: it must take into account the natural and evolved links between...

Politics, like any social process, involves selection mechanisms that determine whether the outcomes of the process are efficient. This paper presents a model of politics as an evolutionary process. The decisions of interest groups to enter politics determines the selected policy. Our model...

A growing body of research highlights the correlation between strong, centralized states and economic growth. Given the important role that national defense has played in the development of the state, it seems as though this would imply some relationship between military expenditures and...