There are four ways to get what you want: gift, make, take, or trade.
Every society has rules that reward some of these ways and penalize others. That observation unlocks puzzles you wouldn't expect to be related.
Why do some goods exchange by the unit and others by the pound? Why do buyers sometimes purchase sight unseen—a so-called pig in a poke? What follows from restricting exchange across borders?
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 academic research, drawing on market process, property rights, and public choice traditions, 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 writing in the Wall Street Journal, The Hill, and elsewhere, I invite curious readers and skeptics to embrace the economic point of view.
Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas.