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
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Slumming It: How Commerce Once Communed with Sin
“The miracle of the modern economy owes as much to the accidental playhouse of 1576 as to the intentional jurisprudence of 1625 and the late-to-the-game Glorious Revolution in 1689.” ~Scott Drylie
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Users, Not Regulators, Decide When Google Will Fall
“Congress should Google the benefits of economic freedom and also search up how to curtail the gargantuan levels of government spending…a bulging bureaucratic state is more costly for Americans than the growing success of our most innovative firms.” ~Kimberlee Josephson
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What Americans Can Learn From Venezuela’s Crackdown on ‘Price Gougers’
“Ten years ago, Venezuela set out on a path to economic ruin and grave shortages of basic consumer goods, because of price controls on groceries and other products. Is the US really going to travel on the same road?” ~Michael Munger
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Harris’s Child Tax Credit Plan Punishes Working Families
“Now is not the time to add even more spending to future taxpayers’ tab. The very Americans whom the Harris plan seeks to help — children — are the ones who will ultimately face the burden of repaying it in the form of higher taxes and dampened economic growth.” ~Kevin Corinth
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Did the Bank of England Set Britain on the Road to Ruin?
“Officials sent out critical letters to Truss and her Chancellor, containing an analysis that has since proved incorrect, and which were immediately leaked to the press. The damage was done – the Bank and the blob had their fall guy.” ~Iain Murray
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Free Market Fundamentals and NatCon Inconsistencies
“I’ve never encountered a protectionist of any stripe who explains why the jobs preserved by protectionism have a higher non-material or ethical importance than do the jobs destroyed by protectionism.” ~Donald Boudreaux
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Does a Construction Cartel Explain Rising Rents?
“Stoller and Quintero may well be right that home-builder concentration does reduce housing supply and raise costs, but it hasn’t been proven yet, and it’s at best a minor factor compared to the zoning restrictions.” ~Jason Sorens
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Regulatory Burden Falls Hardest on the Poor
“Occupational licensing — the costly requirement of a license to be engaged in a particular profession — has grown massively in recent decades. Many of the new regulations fall on low- and medium-income professions.” ~Vincent Geloso
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Beijing’s Sovereign Claims for Tibet
“Chinese policy ignores the reality that Tibetans care more about their own distinctive culture, history, and identity than they care about expressing loyalty to Beijing. Perhaps this is what is most galling to China’s leaders.” ~Christopher Lingle
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Interventions, Easy Money Run Amok
“An obvious set of perverse incentives simply stimulate more risk-taking by corporate management and investment firms in the future, resulting in even bigger future bailouts down the road. At a certain point this strategy of holding the wolf by the ears will become untenable.” ~Richard Morrison
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
