Peer Reviewed Journal Articles Abstract: James M. Buchanan’s 1969 book Cost and Choice speaks directly to the socialist calculation debate from the perspective of the “London Tradition” in the theory of cost. It also places Buchanan alongside Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, and Milton Friedman as an exemplar of what Thomas Sowell called “the constrained vision” in his 1987 [2007] book A Conflict of Visions. This essay explores Buchanan’s radical subjectivism in Cost and Choice, why it aligns him with Sowell’s “constrained vision,” and what this implies about Buchanan’s place within political theory generally. His radically subjectivist analysis of cost underlies his constitutional liberalism, obviating a more activist, interventionist political agenda. Furthermore, combining Buchanan’s subjectivism with Sowell’s A Conflict of Visions can help us better understand Buchanan’s earlier critiques of welfare economics. Thus, we posit that Cost and Choice has continued relevance for the public choice tradition in addition to its contributions to Austrian economics Abstract: States tightly regulate access to alcohol and other substances. During the pandemic and related state of emergency, state and federal governments adopted a variety of regulations affecting this access. State shelter-in-place orders included decisions about whether liquor stores and marijuana dispensaries are essential businesses. Decisions about telehealth access to medical marijuana or treatments for substance use disorders were made at the state and federal levels. This article examines the political economy behind these decisions, focusing on deviations from the norm including Pennsylvania's decision to close state-run liquor stores. Interest groups and other political considerations help explain state and federal policy changes affecting access to alcohol and other substances. Abstract: The disparity in economic progress across nations still confound economists. However, economists know that institutions play a significant role in economic growth. The entrepreneurial activity within a society is shaped by the institutional foundation, especially the property rights structure. However, if property rights are not well-defined and well-enforced, the substance of this entrepreneurial activity may not be welfare-enhancing or growth-enhancing. What is still unclear is the mechanism by which better property rights are adapted in order to facilitate more productive entrepreneurship. By synthesizing insights from the literatures on the market process, the emergence of property rights, and institutional entrepreneurship, this paper presents a mechanism, specifically the ‘property rights institutional entrepreneur,’ that is alert to opportunities to introduce, redefine, or eliminate property rights in order to better facilitate market exchange. By characterizing this specific form of institutional entrepreneur, our understanding of the layers of property rights’ definition, provision, and enforcement is clearer. Property rights are grounded in the norms and customs of a society, but they receive feedback from the market. This feedback is a necessary component to thinking about how property rights change occurs and facilitates economic growth. ​Abstract: Title II, the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970 created the system of drug scheduling and regulation used to this day. This paper illustrates how the CSA created the incentives for induced ‘malnovation’ (innovation intended to circumvent legislation, and thus foil policymakers’ intended ends) into drug markets, namely “designer drugs.” As a result of this induced malnovation, drug markets have not only increased in variance of products available that are often sold under similar street names, but there is a tendency towards creating more dangerous drugs in an attempt to stay outside of the regulation. Abstract: James Buchanan argues that profit seeking and rent seeking are formally the same sort of behavior, but that the substance of such activities—whether they create or destroy wealth—depends on the institutional environment within which they take place. William Baumol and Israel Kirzner each flesh out this distinction between form and substance in more detail but in different ways. Baumol distinguishes between productive, unproductive, and destructive forms of entrepreneurship, while Kirzner distinguishes between ordinary types of entrepreneurial discovery and superfluous discoveries. In this essay we argue that Baumol and Kirzner’s contributions are complementary, providing a more complete taxonomy of the substance of entrepreneurial activity. We also integrate these ideas with recent work on institutional entrepreneurship that examines changes in the rules governing economic activity. We illustrate this taxonomy by examining entrepreneurial innovation in drug markets both legal and illegal, identifying cases of productive, superfluous, erroneous, unproductive, destructive, and protective entrepreneurship. ​​ ​Abstract: The synthetic drug phenomenon has become a growing concern for ordinary citizens, law enforcement, as well as the medical community. Many policymakers and legal scholars have suggested that the only way to curb this issue is to extend the authority to the Drug Enforcement Administration and previous legislation like the Controlled Substance Analogue Enforcement Act of 1986. Using the tools of economics, I analyze post-1970 drug policies and the incentives they created. I also analyze recent policy recommendations to see if they better equipped to handle the nature of the synthetic drug market. I find that all of these policies, old and proposed, fail to acknowledge the incentives they create for drug producers to develop and sell new forms of analogs and synthetic drugs. As a result of increased drug scheduling policies, more synthetic drugs are developed and put on the market. Scheduling policies also lead to increases the potency of drugs available and subsequent problems of asymmetric information, thus making drug consumers worse off.  Abstract: The economics literature cites the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914 as the start of the War on Drugs. With few exceptions, the literature fails to explain the dynamic nature of interventionism. This paper uses a dynamic model of interventionism to show that state and federal legislation passed in the late 19th century produced unintended consequences that ultimately led to the passage of the Harrison Act.