Publications

My work focuses on political economy, innovation, institutions, and the conditions that make discovery possible. This page includes selected publications and policy research. For a full record, please see my CV.

Political Economy, Innovation, and Health Care

Forgone Innovation: Regulation as Pruning of the Adjacent Possible
European Economic Review, 2026.
This article develops the idea of forgone innovation: the discoveries and business models that never emerge because rules make them illegal, too cumbersome, or too risky to try.

Bespoke Science: The Use of Ad Hoc Scientific Advisory Committees in the COVID-19 Pandemic
with Roger Koppl, Kira Pronin, Nick Cowen, and Pablo P. Paniagua
Public Choice, 2025
Winner of the Duncan Black Prize.

Creative Dynamics and Entangled Political Economy
Review of Behavioral Economics, 2021
This article connects creative dynamics and entangled political economy, focusing on open-ended discovery, institutional arrangements, and the limits of design.

Understanding Medicare’s Impact on Innovation: A Framework for Policy Reform
Mercatus Research, 2018
This policy paper examines how Medicare shapes incentives for innovation and experimentation in health care.

FDA-CMS Parallel Review: A Failed Attempt at Spurring Innovation
Journal of Entrepreneurship and Public Policy, 2019
This article examines a policy attempt to accelerate medical innovation and why institutional design can fall short of its intended goals.

Entangled Political Economy

Pandemic Politics within a System of Entangled Political Economy
with Richard E. Wagner
Journal of Contextual Economics, 2020
This article applies the entangled political economy framework to pandemic governance.

Economic Coordination across Divergent Institutional Frameworks: Dissolving a Theoretical Antinomy
with Richard E. Wagner
Review of Political Economy, 2017
This article examines coordination across market and political institutions and challenges the conventional separation between markets and governance.

Dyads, Triads, and the Theory of Exchange: Between Liberty and Coercion
with Richard E. Wagner
Review of Austrian Economics, 2013
This article develops the dyadic and triadic framework that became central to my later work on permission, exchange, and liberty.

Entangled Political Economy and the Two Faces of Entrepreneurship
with Richard E. Wagner
Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice, 2011
This early article explores entrepreneurship within an entangled political economy framework.

Teaching and Public Engagement

I have also written on popular culture as a way to teach economic reasoning and public choice. These articles use familiar stories to help students see incentives, institutions, and collective choice in settings they already understand.

Public Choice Lessons from the Wizarding World of Harry Potter
with Darwyyn Deyo and David T. Mitchell
Journal of Private Enterprise, 2016

It’s Just Like Magic: The Economics of Harry Potter
with Darwyyn Deyo
Journal of Economics and Finance Education, 2014

Bringing Active Learning into High School Economics: Some Examples from The Simpsons
with Joshua C. Hall and Alex Peck
Journal of Economics and Economic Education Research, 2016

Teaching the Economic Way of Thinking through Op-Eds
with Joshua C. Hall
International Review of Economics Education, 2015

Edited Volume and Book Project

Realism, Ideology, and the Convulsions of Democracy
edited with Mikayla Novak and Richard E. Wagner
Springer, 2023

Human Nature and Democracy within a Theory of Entangled Political Economy
with Richard E. Wagner
Book manuscript completed; proposal submitted.

For a full list of publications, book chapters, reviews, grants, teaching, and service, please see my CV.