Explore My Research

My research sits at the intersection of historical political economy, public choice, and the political economy of regulation — when regulation serves the public interest, and when it instead protects incumbents or substitutes for order that markets and communities already supply. Browse below, or filter the working papers by topic. Click any card to read more.

Working Papers

Growth and geographic concentration of bottled-in-bond whiskey withdrawals, 1898–1920

Distillers and Chemists: Strategic Capture of the Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897
Capture without foreclosure: how a consumer-protection law manufactured a premium segment and handed the rents to incumbents
Regulation
Public Choice
Economic History
Working Paper

A public-choice reinterpretation of America’s first quality-certification law. Using a newly digitized state-by-fiscal-year panel (FY1877–1920) built from the Commissioner…

Map of U.S. bank runs, 1889–1929

Private Mechanisms for Stopping Diamond-Dybvig Runs
Evidence from U.S. Newspapers, 1889–1929
Money & Banking
Economic History
Public Choice
Working Paper

Hand-coding 544 bank runs from digitized newspapers shows that banks and their communities stopped runs with a rich toolkit of private, market-based mechanisms — even before…

Decorative barrel-stave banner in amber tones

Assuring Consumers of Authenticity, Safety, and Quality in Early American Whiskey Markets
Entrepreneurship
Economic History
Regulation
Working Paper

Before federal regulation, whiskey was a textbook market for lemons — yet it thrived. How did entrepreneurs privately assure consumers of quality?

Scatter of canton yes-vote share in the 1908 referendum against 1905 vineyard area

Bootleggers Behind the Baptists
Wine-Industry Influence in Switzerland’s 1908 Absinthe Referendum
Public Choice
Public Health
Economic History
Working Paper

Did wine producers — not just public-health reformers — drive Switzerland’s 1908 vote to ban absinthe? A ‘Bootleggers and Baptists’ test using a newly assembled canton-level…

Stacked event study showing no post-disaster change in metropolitan economic freedom within states

Crisis and Local Leviathan
Natural Disasters and Economic Freedom in U.S. Metropolitan Areas, 1972–2017
Public Choice
Economic Freedom
Local Government
Working Paper

Higgs’s ratchet was built on federal emergencies. Does crisis also grow government where citizens can leave? Linking half a century of county disaster losses to the…
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Works in Progress