This paper estimates the impact of corruption on growth of output per worker in U.S. states. The authors find that corruption plays a significant and causal role in lowering growth and investment across the States.

“If you don’t know who the sucker is at the table, it’s probably you,” runs an old poker saying. At the poker table of the current financial crisis, “We are the suckers.” Professor Russ Roberts writes his paper Gambling with Other People’s Money, “And most of us didn’t even know we were sitting at the table.”

The violence that matters in any society is organized violence. The starting point for any theory of the state, therefore, has to be how the state organizes violence rather than how it uses violence.

The recent financial crisis has provoked a raft of contending claims as to whether the cause of the crisis is better attributed to market failure or political failure. Such claims are predicated on a presumption that markets and polities are meaningfully separate entities. To the contrary, we argue that contemporary…

During the financial crisis of 2008, the federal government used taxpayer funds through the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) to buy shares in private firms. In his testimony, Prof. J.W. Verret speaks to the possibility of how government ownership of private firms can pervert the accountability of both government and business.

Professor Peter J. Boettke's remarks upon receiving the 2010 Adam Smith Award from the Association of Private Enterprise Education.

This paper is Peter J. Boettke's speech at the twelfth Sir Ronald Trotter Lecture in New Zealand. Sir Ronald Trotter was the first chairman of the New Zealand Business Roundtable, who was knighted in 1985 for services to business. The Sir Ronald Trotter Lecture was instituted in 1995 by the New Zealand Business Roundtable to mark Sir Ronald Trotter’s many contributions to public affairs in New Zealand. It is given annually by a distinguished international speaker on a major topic of public policy.