This paper builds on the Ostroms' oeuvre to suggest that the binary Samuelsonian taxonomy
of goods–or the 'sterile dichotomy', as Elinor Ostrom calls it–cannot serve as a reliable guide …

In this paper, we explore why there are no examples of societies with low state capacity and
high economic development. We argue that such an outcome is unlikely because of the …

What is Coase's understanding of transaction costs in economic theory and history? Our
argument in this paper is twofold, one theoretical and the other empirical. First, Coase …

Was the lighthouse ever a public good? The lighthouse is presented as the quintessential
public good as it was inherently non-excludable and non-rivalrous. Since the work of Ronald …

James M. Buchanan argued that not only the study of public choice, but also property-rights
economics as well as law and economics, can be traced directly to the work of scholars …

This essay examines the relationship between Austrian economics and economic history. It
notes their different origins as scholarly fields, and divergent trajectories over the course of …

Foundational debates about public service provision originate with the study of private
lighthouses in England and Wales. We provide a new empirical assessment of cost and …

To what extent are the outcomes of economic regulation intended and desired by its
proponents? To address that question, we combine Stigler's theory of regulatory capture …

Does the entrepreneurial market process reflect an equilibrating or disequilibrating tendency
in the allocation of resources? We address this question by utilizing the case of Malcom …

Political economy as a positive and analytic study of governance employs two basic starting
points as it seeks to explain why certain societies have grown rich while others have …