An EF-5 Tornado struck Joplin, MO on May 22, 2011, leaving a twenty mile long path of destruction in its wake. An estimated 7,500 homes and over 500 businesses were damaged or destroyed, with damage estimated at up to $3 billion. Joplin has seen a rapid recovery despite the extensive damage. The...

We supplement the existing empirical literature on Fed independence with a contextualized episodic history to corroborate the empirical literature and inform future studies. We examine the postwar Fed to focus on the ability of the Fed to forge a monetary path independent of political influence...

Implicit in monetary models and policy prescriptions is the assumption that the Fed is independent of political and bureaucratic influence. We challenge this assumption. We consider three channels through which the independence of the Fed has been compromised over its 100-year history; debt...

Attempting to find the technically optimal monetary policy is futile if the Federal Reserve's independence is undermined by political influences. F. A. Hayek, Milton Friedman, and James Buchanan each sought ways to improve the performance of the Federal Reserve. They each ended up rejecting the...

The failure of economic central planning in the Soviet Union is interpreted as evidence of the impossibility of efficient central planning. But the deficiencies of the Soviet economy might have resulted from other factors, such as Soviet history, culture, leadership, and/or unique circumstances,...

This paper provides a theoretical description for the adoption of turn-taking in office where two or more individuals are elected to a committee to serve individual terms for the same public office, with the exclusive right to exercise the public office rotating, exclusively, among the members...

Can an electorate use the projected life expectancy of a lifetime-appointed executive to enforce binding, informal term limits? Informal term limits, based on the life expectancy of an executive candidate at election, would enable an electorate to exercise discretion in adjusting tenure lengths...

Alabama has been traveling down a fiscally unsustainable road. The burden of unchecked fiscal irresponsibility will ultimately fall on taxpayers, making Alabama an unattractive location for residency or business. This path has led Alabama to a crossroads, one where the choice is to continue down...

Contemporary monetary institutions are flawed at a foundational level. The reigning paradigm in monetary policy holds up constrained discretion as the preferred operating framework for central banks. But no matter how smart or well-intentioned are central bankers, discretionary policy contains...