Institutional Change

Like research on government finance, most of my research is also about institutional change. That is true about my New Deal research as well as the early 19^th century research as well.

Some are more institutional than others:

• "Limited Access Orders in the Developing World: A New Approach to the Problems of  Development" with Douglass C. North, Stephen B Webb, and Barry Weingast, World Bank Policy Reseqarch Working Paper, September 2007, WPS4359. [pdf] 
• "A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History" with Douglass C. North and Barry R. Weingast, NBER Working Paper w 12796, December 2006. [pdf]
• "Constitutions, Corporations, and Corruption: American States and Constitutional Change, 1842 to 1852." Journal of Economic History, March 2005. [pdf]
• "The Concept of Systematic Corruption in American Economic and Political History." To appear in Goldin and Glaeser, ed. Corruption and Reform. University of Chicago Press, 2006. [pdf]
• "Equilibrium Federal Impotence: Why the States and not the National Government Financed Transportation Investments in the Ante-Bellum United States." With Barry Weingast, NBER working paper, w11397, June 2005. [pdf]
• "The Public Promotion of Private Interest (Groups)" Collective Choice: Essays in Honor of Mancur Olson, Jac Heckelman and Dennis Coates, ed. Springer-Verlag, 2003.
• "Market Augmenting Government? The State and the Corporation in 19th Century America" in Omar Azfar and Charles Cadwell, ed. Market-Augmenting Government: The Institutional Foundations for Prosperity. University of Michigan Press, 2003.
• "A History of the Property Tax in America," in Property Taxation and Local Government Finance, Wallace E. Oates, ed. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2001.
• "American Government Finance in the Long Run: 1790 to 1990," Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2000.
• "State Constitutional Reform and the Structure of Government Finance in the Nineteenth Century," In Jac Heckelman, John Moorhouse, and Robert Whaples, Ed. Public Choice Interpretations of American Economic History. Boston: Kluwer, 1999.
• "Early American Federalism and Economic Development, 1790-1840," in Panagariya, Portnoy, and Schwab, ed. Environmental and Public Economics: Essays in Honor of Wallace E. Oates, Edward Elgar Press, 1999.
• "Integrating Institutional Change and Technical Change in Economic History: A Transaction Cost Approach" with Douglass C. North, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 150, pp. 609-624, December 1994.
• "Government Growth, Income Growth and Economic Growth", in John James and Mark Thomas, eds. Capitalism in Context, University of Chicago Press, 1994.
• "Towards a Positive Economic Theory of Institutional Change," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 145, pp. 98-112, March 1989.
• Guest Editor, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Volume 15, Number 3, July 2003. "On the Shoulder of Giants: Essays in Honor of Mancur Olson." "Introduction" with Joe Oppenhemier and Piotr Swistak, p. 235-238.
• Guest Editor, Economics and Politics, Volume 15, Number 2, July 2003. "Introduction" with Joe Oppenhemier and Piotr Swistak, p. 103-106.