Market supporters have consistently emphasized that markets make it so that self-interested or even greedy individuals can only help themselves by serving their fellow men and women. This channeling of self-interest away from predation and toward profit seeking explains why market economies tend...

In The Bourgeois Dignity, Deidre McCloskey asserts that although there were many reasons that have been posited for the rise of the bourgeois class and the tremendous increase in the world's standard of living that occurred during the Industrial Revolution, including the enlightenment and the...

"The Economics of Time & Ignorance" (1985) is a key text within Austrian economics. Among the so-called "third generation" of modern Austrian economists, however, the book seems to have had very little impact compared to the notable influence it had upon the proceeding generation. Several...

This paper examines how social capital aids in post-disaster community recovery and redevelopment. While previous studies on social capital and post-disaster recovery have tended to focus on social networks as a source of necessary assistance, the primary focus of this study is on how social...

Bay Street, the main thoroughfare in Nassau, The Bahamas' capital city, is a storehouse for much of that country's social memory. It has been the stage for some of the most significant events in The Bahamas' history and continues to be at the center of Bahamian cultural, economic, and political...

Don Lavoie was the consummate teacher. He embraced the life of the mind, the world of ideas and philosophies and books with all of his being. And, he taught by example rather than by pronouncements, that being a scholar meant that you had to respect but not be bound by disciplinary borders, that...

To date, the discussion about what can be done in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic to blunt the economic, social, and psychological costs has largely focused on government bolstering small businesses through loans and grants, softening the effects of unemployment through unemployment...

This paper compares and contrasts two schools of political economy: the Austrian School, prominent members of which include Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises; and the Bloomington School, which was founded by Elinor and Vincent Ostrom. It is argued that the two traditions share a good deal in...

The market is a tool. It is a social machine that links prospective buyers with prospective sellers. It is a social arena where prospective buyers compete with one another to secure the goods and services that they desire, and where prospective sellers compete with each other to attract...

Anarchy, simply put, means a society without government. Unfortunately, when most people use the word, they typically make it mean something like chaos, or civil unrest; they equate anarchy with Hobbes's jungle where life is 'poore, nasty, brutish and short'. Anarchy, for them, is the penchant...