John Nye

John Nye image
Download hi-res photo

John Nye

  • Frederic Bastiat Chair in Political Economy, Mercatus Center
  • Professor of Economics, George Mason University

John Nye holds the Frederic Bastiat Chair in Political Economy at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He is a specialist in European economic history and new institutional economics.

Dr. Nye was a founding member of the International Society for the New Institutional Economics and has been on the editorial board of the Journal of Economic History. He was co-editor of Frontiers in the New Institutional Economics. His articles have been published in a variety of journals. In 1997, he was a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In 2003, Professor Nye received the ArtSci Council Faculty Teaching Award. His current projects include research into the Anglo-French wine trade, the political economy of state intervention in trade, and detecting collusion in championship chess.

Recent publications include  "Did the Soviets Collude?: A Statistical Analysis of Championship Chess 1940-78" with Charles Moul, in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 2008. His current projects include research into the Anglo-French wine trade, the political economy of policy reform, and collusion in international sporting tournaments.  His book, War, Wine, and Taxes:  The Political Economy of Anglo-French Trade 1689-1900 was published in 2007 from Princeton University Press.

Dr. Nye earned a BS from the California Institute of Technology and a MA and PhD from Northwestern University.

WORKING PAPERS

Trade, Taxes, and Terroir image

Trade, Taxes, and Terroir

Noel D. Johnson, John Nye, Raphael Franck | Jul 06, 2010
This paper uses data on the wine market in France at the turn of the twentieth century to argue that excise taxes collected on quantity can also be protectionist. High internal tax rates generated Alchian-Allen effects that biased consumption and production towards local producers who sold higher priced wine. This study concludes that unit costs, even if they do not discriminate on the point of origin of a product, may generate significant barriers to market integration.
The Depression and the Failure of Impersonal Trust: What Have We Really Learned from the Great Depression image

The Depression and the Failure of Impersonal Trust: What Have We Really Learned from the Great Depression

John Nye | Aug 2009
Large-scale systems of anonymous exchange with millions of strangers, have engendered enormous economic prosperity. However, they have not inspired the kind of devotion that nationality and communal ideology more easily induce. Hence, a severe crisis that affects all economic performance, no matter how narrow the source of the problem, leads…
Does Fortune Favor Dragons? image

Does Fortune Favor Dragons?

John Nye, Noel D. Johnson | Jul 2009
Why do seemingly irrational superstitions persist?  This paper analyzes the widely held belief among Asians that children born in the Year of the Dragon are superior.  It uses pooled cross section data from the U.S. Current Population Survey to show that Asian immigrants to the United States born in the 1976 year of the Dragon are more educated than comparable immigrants from non-Dragon years.
MORE WORKING PAPERS

MEDIA CLIPPINGS

Forbes.com

Nobel Pioneers

John Nye | Oct 12, 2009
John V. C. Nye, the Fredéric Bastiat Chair in Political Economy at the Mercatus Center and professor of economics at George Mason University, discusses Ostrom and Williamson's Nobel win.
WAMU

An Economist Walks into a Bar

John Nye | Jul 17, 2009
John Nye was a guest on the Kojo Nnamdi show on WAMU radio to discuss his research on the economic impacts of taxation and regulation on drinking habits in different societies. Listen to the segment here.…
Regulation Magazine

The Pigou Problem

John Nye | Jul 01, 2008
This article appears in Regulation , Vol. 31, No. 2, Summer 2008. In recent years, there has been a revival of interest in Pigovian taxation, especially for dealing with the problems of global warming and pollution. A number of prominent articles have variously argued for additional Pigovian taxes on gasoline. For instance, Ian Parry and Kenneth…