Papers by Liya Palagashvili
AEA Randomized Controlled Trials, Apr 10, 2023
Advances in Austrian Economics, Apr 28, 2016
During times of economic crises, the public policy response is to abandon basic economic thinking... more During times of economic crises, the public policy response is to abandon basic economic thinking and engage in 'emergency economic' policies. We explore how the current financial crisis was in part caused by previous emergency economic measures. We then investigate the theoretical limitations of emergency economic responses. We argue that these responses fail to take into consideration the practical conditions of politics, and thereby making them unsuitable to remedy the problems of a crisis. Lastly, we provide a preliminary analysis of the consequences resulting from emergency economic policies initiated in response to the 2008 financial crisis.
Social Science Research Network, 2014
Institutions are the formal or informal 'rules of the game' that facilitate economic, soc... more Institutions are the formal or informal 'rules of the game' that facilitate economic, social, and political interactions. These include such things as legal rules, property rights, constitutions, political structures, and norms and customs. The main theoretical insights from Austrian economics regarding private property rights and prices, entrepreneurship, and spontaneous order mechanisms play a key role in advancing institutional economics. The Austrian economics framework provides an understanding for which institutions matter for growth, how they matter, and how they emerge and can change over time. Specifically, Austrians have contributed significantly to the areas of institutional stickiness and informal institutions, self-governance and self-enforcing contracts, institutional entrepreneurship, and the political infrastructure for development.
Social Science Research Network, 2015
The current public debt crises in Western democratic countries provide an important illustration ... more The current public debt crises in Western democratic countries provide an important illustration of what Adam Smith had described as the “juggling trick” – namely deficit increases, accumulation of debt, and debasement of currency – that all governments resort to when confronted with public bankruptcy. In this paper, we utilize the discussion on the public sector growth to illuminate the puzzle in political economy regarding effective government constraints, or questions of how to ‘tame leviathan.’ We argue that altering the institutional structures to be more polycentric would contain important self-generating mechanisms to tame leviathan. Specifically, we point to the role of hard budget constraints and the role of competition in polycentric institutions for generating incentives compatible for reducing the size of government. Furthermore, we argue that public debt can be reduced by decentralizing money because it would eliminate the federal government’s option of monetizing its debt.
Social Science Research Network, 2012
Mr. Henry Hazlitt. .. is the only competent critic of the arts that I have ever heard of who was ... more Mr. Henry Hazlitt. .. is the only competent critic of the arts that I have ever heard of who was at the same time a competent economist, of practical as well as theoretical training, and he is one of the few economists in human history who could really write.-H. L. Mencken, "Ten Years" (1933) Henry Hazlitt (1894-1993) began his career as a journalist at the Wall Street Journal while still a teenager, and it was there that his interest in economics grew as he embarked on a path of self-study as a matter of practical necessity for job success. He read Philip Wicksteed's Common Sense of Political Economy, which he found at the Flatbush, Brooklyn, branch of the New York Public Library, and the book was, as Hazlitt described, "a revelation" to him. Hazlitt, in fact, borrowing liberally from John Keats's "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer," characterized his good fortune in stumbling on Common Sense as: "Much have History of Political Economy 45 (annual suppl.
Recent technological changes are impacting not only goods and services, but also labor markets in... more Recent technological changes are impacting not only goods and services, but also labor markets in the United States. Most notably, this change can be seen in the rise of the gig or platform economy and the freelance movement. From a policy standpoint, this growth of the platform economy poses challenging questions because as work becomes contract-based, workers may be faced with less health insurance coverage and fewer other employment benefits. Developments surrounding the global COVID-19 pandemic have also highlighted the problem of access to benefits among gig, freelance, and self-employed workers. For this reason, there has been interest in rethinking the role of labor regulations and employment benefits with attempts to move toward a solution that encompasses more flexible and portable benefits for workers. In this paper, I investigate the legal and policy barriers that prevent either gig economy platforms to fill the gap of workers benefits or that prevent the emergence of structural changes in the economy to move toward more portable benefits. In doing so, I also propose possible solutions to remove these policy and legal barriers. Future research on this topic should continue to investigate various legal and non-legal barriers and provide analyses of different reforms. The pathway to portable benefits can perhaps be achieved by first recognizing the barriers that stand in its way.
Social Science Research Network, 2022
Social Science Research Network, 2012
Mr. Henry Hazlitt. .. is the only competent critic of the arts that I have ever heard of who was ... more Mr. Henry Hazlitt. .. is the only competent critic of the arts that I have ever heard of who was at the same time a competent economist, of practical as well as theoretical training, and he is one of the few economists in human history who could really write.-H. L. Mencken, "Ten Years" (1933) Henry Hazlitt (1894-1993) began his career as a journalist at the Wall Street Journal while still a teenager, and it was there that his interest in economics grew as he embarked on a path of self-study as a matter of practical necessity for job success. He read Philip Wicksteed's Common Sense of Political Economy, which he found at the Flatbush, Brooklyn, branch of the New York Public Library, and the book was, as Hazlitt described, "a revelation" to him. Hazlitt, in fact, borrowing liberally from John Keats's "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer," characterized his good fortune in stumbling on Common Sense as: "Much have History of Political Economy 45 (annual suppl.
Journal of International Development, Apr 22, 2020
Using data from 2004 to 2008À2012, we provide the first multi-year agency monitoring of Developme... more Using data from 2004 to 2008À2012, we provide the first multi-year agency monitoring of Development Assistance Committee (DAC), multilateral and United Nations (UN) agencies. Our results suggest that, on average, DAC donor performance has declined while multilateral and UN agency performance has increased. Specifically, multilateral and UN agencies are more transparent and specialized while DAC donors are less specialized and failed to improve in other categories.
AEA Randomized Controlled Trials
Labor law and related regulations were created long before the current growth of the on-demand ec... more Labor law and related regulations were created long before the current growth of the on-demand economy and the associated innovation in provision of goods and services. The current labor law structure contains only two primary categories of employment classifications—workers are either employees or contractors. Within this binary structure, the status of workers providing services in the on-demand economy is unclear and subject to ongoing litigation, creating an uncertain operating environment for on-demand companies. In this paper, I argue that these jobs in the on-demand economy represent a form of labor relationship not well captured by the current employee/contractor model. Forcing these on-demand workers to become clearly employees or clearly contractors would, in either case, be replacing the current services with distinct and quite likely inferior services from those offered in the on-demand economy today. I conclude that the preferred resolution of the current uncertain lega...
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2014
University of Chicago Legal Forum, 2018
Labor law and related regulations were created long before the current growth of the on-demand ec... more Labor law and related regulations were created long before the current growth of the on-demand economy and the associated innovation in provision of goods and services. The current labor law structure contains only two primary categories of employment classifications-workers are either employees or contractors. Within this binary structure, the status of workers providing services in the on-demand economy is unclear and subject to ongoing litigation, creating an uncertain operating environment for on-demand companies. In this paper, I argue that these jobs in the on-demand economy represent a form of labor relationship not well captured by the current employee/contractor model. Forcing these on-demand workers to become clearly employees or clearly contractors would, in either case, be replacing the current services with distinct and quite likely inferior services from those offered in the on-demand economy today. I conclude that the preferred resolution of the current uncertain legal and regulatory environment surrounding employment in the on-demand economy would be through modification of the classification scheme to reflect this new alternative type of labor relationship, rather than by forgoing the value created by the on-demand economy. 24 Muhl, supra note 11, at 5. 25 Id. 26 Id. at 6 exhibit 1. 27 Id. 28 See id. at 7 ("Accordingly, a worker could be classified as an employee for the purposes of dealing with one Federal law, such as the Fair Labor Standards Act, but as an independent contractor under another, like FICA.").
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2015
During times of economic crises, the public policy response is to abandon basic economic thinking... more During times of economic crises, the public policy response is to abandon basic economic thinking and engage in ‘emergency economic’ policies. We explore how the current financial crisis was in part caused by previous emergency economic measures. We then investigate the theoretical limitations of emergency economic responses. We argue that these responses fail to take into consideration the practical conditions of politics, and thereby making them unsuitable to remedy the problems of a crisis. Lastly, we provide a preliminary analysis of the consequences resulting from emergency economic policies initiated in response to the 2008 financial crisis.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2014
We outline the work of James Buchanan and his influence and contributions to political economy, i... more We outline the work of James Buchanan and his influence and contributions to political economy, institutional analysis, and self-governance. In addition to pioneering the public choice movement, we argue that Buchanan’s greatest contribution to political economy was initiating the constitutional level of analysis in economics. In doing so, we highlight Buchanan's main emphasis on the elementary principles of economics and how they fit into the broader agenda of economist as teacher and enabler of improving the democratic process; the role of economists as studying exchange; the reconciliation of the economists’ zeal for reform with positive economic theory and how this notion advances the importance of constitutional-making from the bottom-up; and finally, the introduction of the main puzzle in political economy regarding constitutional constraint. We argue that it is in the broader field of development economics and self-governance research that his ideas concerning the “rules level of analysis” can have its deepest impact.
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2015
Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues in The Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at India... more Elinor Ostrom and her colleagues in The Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University in Bloomington conducted fieldwork in metropolitan police departments across the United States. Their findings in support of community policing dealt a blow to the popular belief that consolidation and centralization of services was the only way to effectively provide citizens with public goods. However, subsequent empirical literature suggests that the widespread implementation of community policing has been generally ineffective and in many ways unsustainable. We argue that the failures are the result of strategic interplay between federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies that has resulted in the prioritization of federal over community initiatives, the militarization of domestic police, and the erosion of genuine community-police partnerships.
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Papers by Liya Palagashvili