Robert E. Wright

  • The Maldistribution of Wealth

    “A system based on voluntary exchange is much more equitable than the system sought by progressives, who want to perpetuate and expand the maldistribution system where a small percentage of the population loots the rest under the guise of law.” ~ Robert E. Wright

    The Maldistribution of Wealth
  • Price Stability First

    “The best the federal government can do right now is to announce that no major policy changes will be implemented until the Federal Reserve gets inflation under control.” ~ Robert E. Wright

    Price Stability First
  • We Can’t Breathe!

    “The lucky thing is that no planning is needed for recovery, just removal of the policies restricting the free flow of funds to those willing to take calculated risks.” ~ Robert E. Wright

    We Can’t Breathe!
  • Save Your Flip Flops for the Beach

    “Voters should vote their convictions and consciences as the Framers intended, and policymakers and pundits should stop flip-flopping like fish or flimsy footwear. Either way, it’s a bad look that hurts democratic discourse.” ~ Robert E. Wright

    Save Your Flip Flops for the Beach
  • Proposing a Hank Williams Jr. Economic Misery Index

    “Another problem is that the misery indices, like definitions of recession and stagflation, focus on unemployment to the exclusion of real wages. But real wage declines are painful, and not fully captured by inflation alone.” ~ Robert E. Wright

    Proposing a Hank Williams Jr. Economic Misery Index
  • Is America in a Recession?

    “Traditionally, NBER calls recessions and other phases of business cycles, but only retrospectively, and mostly just for scholars. Nobody actually involved in trading securities or making policy waits for its decisions and voters certainly won’t.” ~ Robert E. Wright

    Is America in a Recession?
  • Planning Fails Because Rules Rule

    “What, then, are organizational leaders to do? Think like classical liberals and align incentives carefully! Give workers autonomy by allowing them to make decisions where they have superior information.” ~ Robert E. Wright

    Planning Fails Because Rules Rule
  • Liberty and the Power of the Purse

    “The colonists ripped the British Empire apart to combat what they considered political slavery, and Southerners tried to do likewise to the U.S. Republic to maintain chattel slavery. Liberty again hangs by the purse strings and by no means must it prevail.” ~ Robert E. Wright

    Liberty and the Power of the Purse
  • Make America Free Again (MAFA)

    “The policy path to MAFA is clear, deregulate everything from Amtrak to monetary policy, while reinvigorating the Third Sector (nonprofits) and forming a Ministry of Truth to police all claims, and only claims, made by governments, government officials, and politicians.” ~ Robert E. Wright

    Make America Free Again (MAFA)
  • The Amtrak Abomination

    “While trains are not especially good for the environment, many people assume they are ‘green,’ also allowing for some of the fake virtue signaling many American politicians seem to crave.” ~ Robert E. Wright

    The Amtrak Abomination

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

RE Wright. IH52 Sourcebook, 100-35, 0

John Potts, Ground Rents, and the Early Economic Development of Pottstown, 1752-17756

RE Wright. Bulletin of the Historical Society of Montgomery County, 5-18, 1999

Israel Jacobs (1726-1796) of Providence Township: Farmer, Weaver, Quaker Congressman

RE Wright. Bulletin of the Historical Society of Montgomery County, 300-11, 1999

Michael Hillegas

LM Wright, Robert E., Wolfe. Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania: A Biographical Dictionary, 2005

Israel Jacobs

LM Wright, Robert E., Wolfe. Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania: A Biographical Dictionary, 2005

John Jacobs

LM Wright, Robert E., Wolfe. Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania: A Biographical Dictionary, 2005

Joseph King

LM Wright, Robert E., Wolfe. Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania: A Biographical Dictionary, 2005

Giles Knight

LM Wright, Robert E., Wolfe. Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania: A Biographical Dictionary, 2005

Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets: How to Fix America’s Trillion-Dollar Construction Industry

T Wright, Robert E., LePatner, Barry, Jacobson. University of Chicago Press, 2007

Henry Pawling

LM Wright, Robert E., Wolfe. Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania: A Biographical Dictionary, 2005

Amos Strickland

LM Wright, Robert E., Wolfe. Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania: A Biographical Dictionary, 2005

John Morton

LM Wright, Robert E., Wolfe. Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania: A Biographical Dictionary, 2005

Abraham Chapman

LM Wright, Robert E., Wolfe. Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania: A Biographical Dictionary 4, 2005

Introduction

RE Wright. The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 2005

Founding Corporate Power in Early National Philadelphia

RE Wright. The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 105 (2), 295-297, 2007

Benjamin Chapman

LM Wright, Robert E., Wolfe. Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania: A Biographical Dictionary, 2005

Joseph Ellicott

LM Wright, Robert E., Wolfe. Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania: A Biographical Dictionary, 2005

Environment+ Genes= Obesity? It Just Ain’t So!

RE Wright. IDEAS ON LIBERTY 53, 4-5, 2003

How Government Disables Private Disability Insurance

RE Wright. IDEAS ON LIBERTY 53, 24-27, 2003

Born Capitalist: Free Markets and Hominid Evolution

RE Wright. IDEAS ON LIBERTY 53, 44-48, 2003

Manufacturing Revolution: The Intellectual Origins of Early American Industry

RE Wright. The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 101 (4), 512-513, 2003

Cashing a Cheque in the Third Millennium AD

RE Wright. FREEMAN-NEW SERIES-FOUNDATION FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION- 54, 8-9, 2004

Old Dominion Industrial Commonwealth: Coal, Politics, and Economy in Antebellum America

RE Wright. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 37 (4), 636-637, 2007

Fighting over money

RE Wright. The Wilson Quarterly 31 (1), 98, 2007

Capitals of Capital: A History of International Financial Centres, 1780-2005

RE Wright. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 39 (1), 97-98, 2008

Appeasing Bankers: Financial Caution on the Road to War

RE Wright. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 39 (2), 250-251, 2008

Knowledge for Generations

GD Wright, Robert E., Jacobson, Timothy, and Smith. John Wiley & Sons, 2008

Political Institutions and Financial Development

RE Wright. Journal of Economic Literature 46 (4), 991-992, 2008

Wright, Slavery and American Economic Development

RE Wright. REGISTER-KENTUCKY HISTORICAL SOCIETY 105 (1), 121, 2007

John Wilkinson

LM Wright, Robert E., Wolfe. Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania: A Biographical Dictionary, 2005

Thomas Willing

LM Wright, Robert E., Wolfe. Lawmaking and Legislators in Pennsylvania: A Biographical Dictionary, 2005

Observations on the Composition of Colonial Pennsylvania’s Money Supply

RW Michener, RE Wright. Available at SSRN 683489, 2005

From Buildings and Loans to Bail-Outs: A History of the American Savings and Loan Industry, 1831-1995

RE Wright. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 37 (1), 140-141, 2006

The Paradox of Democratic Capitalism: Politics and Economics in American Thought

RE Wright. The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 104 (3/4), 705-707, 2006

Gilded Age Redux? No, The Age of Pyrite

RE Wright. The Idea Exchange, n/a, 2013

Comment on Kamstra: Additional Reasons to Be Thrilled About Trills

RE Wright. The Economists’ Voice 7 (4), 2010

The Age of Deficits: Presidents and Unbalanced Budgets from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush

RE Wright. The Journal of American History 98 (4), 1209-1210, 2012

The Competition Game

RE Wright. Journal of Private Enterprise 29 (1), 141, 2013

Introduction

RE Wright. The National Corporate System: Conceptual Foundations of Performance …, 2014

Federalism: Conflicts Among Local, State, and Federal Objectives

D Wright, Robert E. and Kozlowski. The C.Q. Guide to U.S. Economic Policy, 133-44, 2014

Government and Markets: Toward a New Theory of Regulation

RE Wright. Contemporary Sociology 39 (5), 545-547, 2010

The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism

RE Wright. The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 107 (3), 425-426, 2009

The Framers and the Roots of Economic Prosperity

RE Wright. Insights on L. & Soc’y 10, 4, 2009

What to Do About the Government Sponsored Enterprises?

LW Wright, Robert E., Dwight Jaffee, Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, Matthew Richardson. Restoring Financial Stability: How to Repair a Failed System, 117-37, 2009

Business History> Piketty

RE Wright. Available at SSRN 2572674, 2015

Community, Mega, and Goldilocks Banks in US History

RE Wright. Mega, and Goldilocks Banks in US History (March 16, 2015), 2015

THE SIXTH DAKOTA

RE Wright. Financial History, 16, 2015

Devolution of the Republican Model of Anglo-American Corporate Governance

RE Wright. International Corporate Governance 18, 65-80, 2015

Christopher Beauchamp. Invented by Law: Alexander Graham Bell and the Patent That Changed America.

RE Wright. The American Historical Review 121 (1), 246-247, 2016

The Poverty of Slavery: How Enslavers Victimize Us All

RE Wright. Available at SSRN 2764992, 2016

That Which Is Unseen I: Slavery’s Pollution

RE Wright, RE Wright. The Poverty of Slavery: How Unfree Labor Pollutes the Economy, 143-197, 2017

Business, Religion, History, and Consilience

RE Wright. The Business Turn in American Religious History, vii-xix, 2017

From Jim Crow Finance to Subprime Shenanigans: Expunging Financial Exclusion, Discrimination, and Predation from America

RE Wright. Discrimination, and Predation from America (February 4, 2017), 2017

Shavers, Sharks and Payday Lenders

RE Wright. Financial History, 16, 2015

Corporate Citizens: South Dakota Chartermongering in the Early Twentieth Century

RE Wright. The Plains Political Tradition: Essays on South Dakota Political Culture 2 …, 2014

Susie J. Pak. Gentlemen Bankers: The World of JP Morgan.

RE Wright. The American Historical Review 119 (3), 919-919, 2014

America’s Fiscal Constitution: Its Triumph and Collapse

RE Wright. Financial History, 38, 2014

Mastering Iron: The Struggle to Modernize an American Industry, 1800-1868

RE Wright. The Journal of American History 101 (3), 931-932, 2014

What Is Classical Liberal History?

RE Wright. The Independent Review 23 (3), 472-475, 2019

Financial Egalitarianism in America

RE Wright. In All Fairness: Liberty, Equality, and the Quest for Human Dignity, 135-46, 2019

The Panic of 1819: The First Great Depression by Andrew H. Browning

RE Wright. Journal of Southern History 86 (1), 148-149, 2020

Making IT Work: A History of the Computer Services Industry

RE Wright. Journal of American History 105 (3), 770-771, 2018

Economic Growth and Slavery, Then and Now

RE Wright. Financial History, 11, 2017

Early American Tax Havens

RE Wright. Available at SSRN 3182496, 2018

Banking System Stability/Fragility: The Roles of Governance and Supervision in Canada and America

RE Wright. Becoming 150: 150 Years of Canadian Business History, 226-38, 2018

The Musical” Hamilton” from the Perspective of Financial History, in Verse

RE Wright. The Independent Review 21 (4), 535-544, 2017

Financial Discrimination and Innovation

RE Wright. Financial History, 12-15, 2019

American Default: The Untold Story of FDR, the Supreme Court, and the Battle Over Gold

RE Wright. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 49 (4), 685-686, 2019

Postbellum Banking

R Wright. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, 2020

Debating Universal Basic Income: Pros, Cons, and Alternatives

RE Wright, A Przegalińska. Springer Nature, 2022

Four Databases for Microsoft Windows

RE Wright. History and Computing 6 (2), 116-124, 1994

Are Dietary Guidelines a Public Good?

RE Wright. IDEAS ON LIBERTY 52, 16-19, 2002

Woman of Steel

JM Traflet, RE Wright. Financial History, 28-31, 2022

Godly Non-Profits: Extending the Porterfield Thesis

RE Wright. Human Flourishing: Economic Wisdom for a Fruitful Christian Vision of the …, 2020

Reducing Recidivism

RE Wright. Available at SSRN 3733040, 2020

Capital in the Nineteenth Century

RE Wright. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 51 (3), 482-484, 2020

Capital in the Nineteenth Century by Robert E. Gallman and Paul W. Rhode

RE Wright. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 51 (3), 482-484, 2021

Radical Hamilton: Economic Lessons from a Misunderstood Founder by Christian Parenti

RE Wright. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 52 (1), 130-132, 2021

AI: UBI Income Portfolio Adjustment to Technological Transformation

APRE Wright. Frontiers in Human Dynamics: Social Networks 3, 1-11, 2021

AI ≠ UBI: Income Portfolio Adjustment to Technological Transformation

RE Wright, A Przegalinska. Augmented Education in the Global Age: Artificial Intelligence and the …, 2023

Money, Power, and the People: The American Struggle to Make Banking Democratic by Christopher W. Shaw

RE Wright. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 52 (4), 624-626, 2022

The US National Debt, 1787-1900

RE Wright. Pickering & Chatto, 2005

Thinking beyond the public company

RE Wright. McKinsey Quarterly, 2010

American Property: A History of How, Why, and What We Own

RE Wright. Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 109 (2), 276-278, 2011

Government bailouts

RE Wright. Routledge Handbook of Major Events in Economic History, 432-444, 2013

AI: UBI Income Portfolio Adjustment to Technological Transformation

AK Przegalinska, RE Wright. Frontiers in Human Dynamics 3, 725516, 2021

Wall Street on the Prairie

RE Wright. Financial History, 24, 2013

Reducing recidivism and encouraging desistance: a social entrepreneurial approach

RE Wright. Journal of Entrepreneurship and Public Policy, 2022

Reinsurance in America: Regulatory Regimes and Markets

RE Wright. Role of Reinsurance in the World: Case Studies of Eight Countries, 23-43, 2021

The modern corporation statement on economics

W Lazonick, S Blankenburg, J Froud, MA O’Sullivan, C Sauviat, ….

For-and non-profit special corporations in America, 1608–1860

RE Wright. Research Handbook on the History of Corporate and Company Law, 480-509, 2018

German Corporate Entrepreneurs in Nineteenth Century America (1800-1899)

RE Wright. Immigrant Entrepreneurship: German-American Business Biographies, 1720-Present, 2014

Corporate Social Responsibility and the Rise of the Non-profit Sector in America

RE Wright. A History of Socially Responsible Business, c. 1600–1950, 117-135, 2017

Pandemics and Epidemics: Financial and Economic Effects

R Sylla, J Traflet, RE Wright. Financial History, 20-24, 2020

Liberty Befits All

RE Wright. The Independent Review 25 (3), 385-395, 2020

Corporate entrepreneurship and economic growth in America, 1790-1860

R Wright. JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY 69 (2), 569-569, 2009

The World’s First Stock Exchange

RE Wright. The Historian 79 (1), 189-191, 2017

Insuring America: Market, Intermediated, and Government Risk Management Since 1790

RE Wright. Encuentro Internacional Sobra la Historia del Seguro, 239-98, 2010

Financial Exclusion: How Competition Can Fix a Broken System

RE Wright. American Institute for Economic Research, 2019

Corporate Entrepreneurship in the Antebellum South

RE Wright. Southern Society and Its Transformation, 1790-1860, 195-241, 2011

The Pivotal Role of Private Enterprise in America’s Transportation Age, 1790-1860

RE Wright. Journal of Private Enterprise 29 (2), 1, 2014

Best of Thomas Paine

RE Wright. American Institute for Economic Research, 2021

Cementing the Union

RE Wright. Financial History 90 (2008), 14-18, 2008

A market solution to the oversupply of historians

RE Wright. Chronicle of Higher Education 2, 2002

Guide to US Economic Policy

RE Wright, TW Zeiler. CQ Press, 2014

Financing US economic growth, 1790-1860: corporations, markets, and the real economy

RE Wright. Financial System and Economic Growth: Credit, Crises and Regulation from the …, 2017

Ground rents against populist historiography: Mid-Atlantic land tenure, 1750-1820

RE Wright. The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 29 (1), 23-42, 1998

Money and banking

RE Wright.

Artisans, banks, credit, and the election of 1800

RE Wright. The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 122 (3), 211-239, 1998

Teaching history in business schools: An insider’s view

RE Wright. Academy of Management Learning & Education 9 (4), 697-700, 2010

Financial crisis and reform: Looking back for clues to the future

RE Wright. The Mckinsey Quarterly”, December, 1-2, 2008

Thomas Willing (1731-1821): Philadelphia financier and forgotten founding father

RE Wright. Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, 525-560, 1996

America‘s first securities markets, 1790-1830: Emergence, development, and integration

R Sylla, JW Wilson, RE Wright. Cliometrics Conference paper, 1997

Farley Grubb’s noisy evasions on colonial money: a rejoinder

RW Michener, RE Wright. Econ Journal Watch 3 (2), 251, 2006

Reforming the US IPO market: lessons from history and theory

RE Wright. Accounting, Business & Financial History 12 (3), 419-437, 2002

Genealogy of American Finance

RE Wright, R Sylla. Columbia University Press, 2015

Corporate insurers in antebellum America

RE Wright, C Kingston. Business History Review 86 (3), 447-476, 2012

Capitalism and the Rise of the Corporation Nation

RE Wright. Capitalism Takes Command: The Social Transformation of Nineteenth-Century …, 2012

Women and finance in the early national US

R Wright. Essays in History 42 (1), 2000

The US Panic of 1792: Financial Crisis Management and the Lender of Last Resort

D Cowen, R Sylla, R Wright. New York University, working paper, 2006

Bank ownership and lending patterns in New York and Pennsylvania, 1781–1831

RE Wright. Business History Review 73 (1), 40-60, 1999

Hamilton unbound: Finance and the creation of the American republic

RE Wright. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002

State “currencies” and the transition to the US dollar: Clarifying some confusions

RW Michener, RE Wright. American Economic Review 95 (3), 682-703, 2005

The First Wall Street

RE Wright. University of Chicago Press Economics Books, 2005

Origins of commercial banking in America, 1750-1800

RE Wright. Rowman & Littlefield, 2001

Corporation nation

RE Wright. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013

Alexander Hamilton, central banker: crisis management during the US financial panic of 1792

R Sylla, RE Wright, DJ Cowen. Business History Review 83 (1), 61-86, 2009

Financial founding fathers: The men who made America rich

RE Wright, DJ Cowen. University of Chicago Press, 2006

Integration of trans-Atlantic capital markets, 1790–1845

R Sylla, JW Wilson, RE Wright. Review of Finance 10 (4), 613-644, 2006

Bailouts: Public Money, Private Profit

RE Wright. Columbia University Press, 2010

Miscounting money of colonial America

RW Michener, RE Wright. Econ Journal Watch 3 (1), 4, 2006

Development of the US monetary union

R Michener, RE Wright. Financial History Review 13 (1), 19-41, 2006

Rise of the corporation nation

RE Wright. Founding Choices: American Economic Policy in the 1790s, 217-258, 2010

Banking and Politics in New York, 1784-1829

RE Wright. State University of New York at Buffalo, 1997

The deadliest of games: the institution of dueling

CG Kingston, RE Wright. Southern Economic Journal 76 (4), 1094-1106, 2010

Corporation formation in the antebellum United States in comparative context

R Sylla, RE Wright. Business History 55 (4), 653-669, 2013

Price Quotations in Early United States Securities Markets, 1790-1860

RE Sylla, JW Wilson, RE Wright. Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, 2005