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When and why are illicit markets regarded as morally legitimate? We address this question in the context of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, where the moral legitimacy of commerce has waned since the collapse of the Soviet Union. We do so by analyzing the continued resiliency and robustness of illicit markets and their moral perception in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia, where de facto private property rights have remained insecure in spite of de jure political and economic reform. Given the continuity of illicit markets across both periods, we argue twofold. First, what has remained constant in the moral nature of illicit markets across both periods has been the entrepreneurial drive to realize gains from trade by circumventing and evading a predatory state. Secondly, given this constancy in the form of illicit market exchange, we contend that changing moral attitudes toward commerce have resulted from the changing manifestation of illicit market exchange, in response to the predatory nature of the state. In both the Soviet and post-Soviet period, the state has remained a means to create monopoly privileges. However, whereas in the Soviet period, illicit markets served as a means to "grease the wheels" of commerce, economic transition in post-Soviet Russia corrupted the moral legitimacy of a market economy by transforming illicit markets into a means to "grease the palms" of government officials in the name of "privatization." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological advances associated with computing power and the prospect of artificial intelligence have renewed interest on the economic feasibility of socialism. The question of such feasibility turns on whether the problem of economic calculation has fundamentally changed. In spite of the prospect of what King and Petty (2021) refer to as "technosocialism," we argue that technological advances in computation cannot replace the competitive discovery process that takes place within the context of the market. We do so by situating the case for technosocialism in the context of the socialist calculation debate. Understood in these terms, technosocialism represents a restatement of the case for market socialism, which incorrectly framed the "solution" to economic calculation under socialism as one of computing data, rather than the discovery of context-specific knowledge that only emerges through the exchange of property rights. Therefore, the arguments put forth by Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek, and later Israel Kirzner and Don Lavoie, regarding the impossibility of economic calculation under socialism remains just as relevant today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: James M. Buchanan has argued that the primary role that the economist plays in society is a pedagogical one. The job of the economist is to teach students the principles of economics, most notably an understanding of spontaneous order and the role of the price system in generating that order within the market. The didactic purpose is simply to teach students so they may in fact become informed participants within the democratic process of collective choice. It is in our job as teachers of the basic principles of economic science, and not as pure researchers, let alone as policy experts who act as saviors, that justifies the public expenditure on the discipline. Economics to Buchanan is a ‘prophylactic against popular fallacies’ and not a tool of social control. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper is an exercise in the archeology of knowledge that seeks to understand the intellectual precursors to the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. This perspective reveals that the research agenda of the Ostroms draws significantly from the ideas and themes developed in the first half of the 20th century by Knight, Mises, and Hayek. In so doing, we argue, they usefully deploy and expand the economic way of thinking beyond its traditional boundaries while avoiding most of the criticisms of economic imperialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an introduction to the June 2005 issue of the "Journal of Economic & Organization."