There are four ways to get what you want: gift, make, take, or trade.
I study how institutions, the rules of the game, shape which path people choose and what follows. That lens connects questions that do not look related at first. Why are some goods sold by the unit and others by the pound? Why do buyers sometimes purchase a pig in a poke, sight unseen? What happens when exchange across borders is restricted?
I’m an Associate Professor of Economics in the Winklevoss School of Business at Grove City College and a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. My research draws on the market-process, property-rights, and public-choice traditions. It has appeared in the Journal of Business Venturing (Best Paper of 2022), Public Choice, and the International Review of Law and Economics.
Much of my work reaches beyond the academy. Through my books No Free Lunch and Mere Economics, my blog Marginalia, and essays in the Wall Street Journal, The Hill, and elsewhere, I write for curious readers, including skeptics of the economic point of view.