A free and prosperous society requires a functioning market economy at its foundation. Using a broad array of tools drawn from price theory, public choice analysis, Austrian theory, and classical empiricism, our study of economics and economic freedom explores the underpinnings of the market system, the roots of economic prosperity, and emerging threats to the same in the public policy sphere. Our work includes the measurement of freedom and providing practical economic information for people to make better decisions.
Articles
Certificate of Need Laws: How Government Permission Slips Restrict Care and Raise Costs
CON laws give regulators — and incumbent providers — the power to block new competition, at the expense of access and affordability.
Early Supercomputing Helped Reduce Cold War Risks
The same technologies that once fueled fears of nuclear conflict later helped reduce them and would go on to reshape both strategy and everyday life.
Deaths from Despair: Is Globalization a Health Risk?
Claims that NAFTA increased deaths among manufacturing workers overlook a key reality: most job loss stems from productivity gains, not trade.
AIER’s Everyday Price Index Rockets 2.5 Percent in March 2026
Household costs are rising faster than mainstream inflation gauges reveal. US military adventurism is hitting Americans hard.
The Housing Crisis Is a Supply Problem
Rising prices make us look for someone to blame, but the broken market has a simple cause: it's illegal to build enough homes.
Trump’s Greatest ‘Art of the Deal’
The president can escape the economic trench warfare he started in April 2025. But first, he’ll have to remember a decades-old lesson from the greatest deal he ever struck.
Can Trump’s Maritime Plan Save America’s Struggling Shipyards?
America’s shipbuilding troubles did not begin with foreign rivals — and they will not be solved by taxing them.
Full Employment May Still Signal Stagnation in Labor
Low layoffs and low hiring have created a fragile equilibrium. The underlying picture points to drift, not true growth.
Economist and Revolutionary – Adam Smith and 1776
Samuel Gregg examines Adam Smith’s analysis of the economic drivers behind the American Revolution. He highlights Smith’s revolutionary solutions for resolving the conflict and concludes by applying these enduring insights…
Congress Is Moving the Goalposts on Fiscal Responsibility
Is targeting three percent of GDP a turning point, or another empty promise?
Research Publications
General Institutional Considerations of Blockchain and Emerging Applications
PC Earle, DM Waugh. The Emerald Handbook on Cryptoassets: Investment Opportunities and …, 2023
Decentralized Marketplaces with Privately Enforced Contracts: A Case Study of OpenBazaar.
PC Earle, M Gulker, EP Stringham. Journal of Private Enterprise 37 (4), 2022
INTERNATIONAL SANCTIONS: Effective economic weapon or fundamentally flawed policy tool?
PC Earle. Financial History, 12-15, 2022
A Gay Bar and Some Polygamists Had a Fight over Zoning…
RM Yonk. Cato Institute, 2022
Achieving Ecological Reflexivity: The Limits of Deliberation and the Alternative of Free-Market-Environmentalism
J Enninga, RM Yonk. Sustainability 15 (8), 6396, 2023
Marie Springer: The politics of Ponzi schemes: history, theory, and policy: Routledge, 2020
RE Wright. Business Economics 57 (2), 89-91, 2022
The History and Evolution of the North American Wildlife Conservation Model
RE Wright. Palgrave Macmillan, 2022
The Political Economy of Modern Wildlife Management: How Commercialization Could Reduce Game Overabundance
RE Wright. The Independent Review 26 (4), 513-532, 2022
The calculus of dissent: Bias and diversity in FOMC projections
TL Hogan. Public Choice 191 (1-2), 105-135, 2022
Framing affordable housing: an experimental test of changing attitudes
M Matheis, J Sorens. Housing Studies, 1-17, 2022
Regulatory Decentralization and Stringency: The Case of Comparative Minimum Wage and Renewable Energy Policies
J Sorens. Publius: The Journal of Federalism 53 (1), 55-81, 2023
Changing Minds on Restrictive Zoning: How to Unclog America’s Home Supply
J Sorens. Manhattan Institute, Apr 1, 2022
Situating Southern Influences in James M. Buchanan and Modern Public Choice Economics
A Carden, V Geloso, PW Magness. Standard of Living: Essays on Economics, History, and Religion in Honor of …, 2022
Gordon Tullock and the Economics of Slavery
P Magness, A Carden, I Murtazashvili. Available at SSRN 4318585, 2023
How pronounced is the U-curve? Revisiting income inequality in the United States, 1917–60
VJ Geloso, P Magness, J Moore, P Schlosser. The Economic Journal 132 (647), 2366-2391, 2022
Books
