Working Papers by Peter J. Boettke

Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues found that small police departments with a high degree of community involvement were able to effectively provide public safety in their communities. However, subsequent empirical literature suggests that the widespread implementation of community policing has been generally ineffective and in many ways unsustainable. This paper argues that these failures are the result of 1.) institutional incompatibilities within the nested, polycentric network of organizations that provides public safety and 2.) perverse incentives generated by federal policy and the increasing militarization of the police.

In this paper, the authors attempt to recapture the doux commerce thesis and its relevance for contemporary debates over commerce and culture.

Implicit in most monetary economists’ models and policy prescriptions is the assumption that the Federal Reserve is largely independent of political and special interest group influence. The authors challenge this assumption. Using existing theoretical and empirical evidence, they detail four channels through which the independence of the Federal Reserve has been compromised in the past.

Henry Hazlitt was a unique public intellectual, who strove to not only to enlighten the general public with his writings, speeches, and appearances on TV and radio, but sought to contribute to the specialized disciplines of economics and philosophy.