pro bono
Professional work, especially legal, performed for free for the public good.
binding themselves to the mast
A commitment device (from the Odysseus myth) by which an actor deliberately removes its own future options to make a promise credible—here, nonprofit status signaling inability to extract profit.
crowded out / crowding out
The displacement of private activity (here, private charity) by expanded government provision.
501 (IRS code section)
The section of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code that defines tax-exempt nonprofit organizations and justifies them by their provision of social services.
upselling
A sales technique of encouraging customers to purchase additional or higher-value products beyond what they initially intended.
confidence interval / 95% confidence range
A statistical range that, for a given confidence level (e.g., 95%), is expected to contain the true value or outcome, expressing the precision of a prediction.
simultaneity problem
The difficulty in causal inference when the supposed cause and effect influence each other, so observed correlations may reflect causation running in the opposite direction.
two stage least squares / instrumental variables
An econometric technique used to estimate causal effects when there is reverse causation or confounding, by using an 'instrument' correlated with the cause but not directly with the outcome.
evidence-based medicine (EBM)
An approach to medical practice that grades treatments by the quality of supporting statistical evidence (from expert consensus up to multiple randomized controlled trials) and uses that evidence to guide decisions.
planogram
A diagram or model that specifies the placement of retail products on shelves to maximize sales.
directed donation
Donating an organ to a specific named recipient rather than to whoever is next on the waiting list.
deceased (cadaveric) organ donation
Harvesting organs from people who have died under circumstances allowing donation, contrasted with living donation.
universal donor / type O blood
Blood type O, which can be donated to recipients of any blood type; relevant to organ compatibility matching.
trusted intermediary
A third party (here a credit card network) that reduces transaction risk for both buyer and seller by guaranteeing payment and providing recourse.
division of labor is limited by the extent of the market
Adam Smith's principle that the degree of worker specialization possible depends on how large the market is; bigger markets allow finer specialization.
price index / deflator
An index used to adjust nominal income or output for inflation; if it overstates inflation, it understates real gains in living standards.
Fed Funds rate
The interest rate at which banks lend reserves to each other overnight, which the Federal Reserve influences day to day through liquidity operations.
starve the beast
Milton Friedman's theory of politics that cutting taxes will reduce government spending by limiting the revenue available to politicians.
measured productivity
An aggregate statistic computed as total output divided by a measure of labor (workers or hours), which can rise mechanically when many non-final-production workers are laid off even if individual effort is unchanged.
procyclical productivity
The pattern (historically observed) in which measured labor productivity rises during economic booms and falls during recessions.
rifle shot
Capitol Hill slang for a narrowly drafted legislative provision (often tax) designed to benefit a single company or product without naming it, by specifying qualifying criteria only that target meets.
earmark
A provision directing federal funds to a specific project in a member's district, used by party leaders as a low-cost tool to reward or discipline members' votes.
flat (elastic) supply curve
A supply curve where a small price change produces a large change in quantity supplied; implies little producer surplus and easy reallocation of production.
marginal change
A change that affects behavior at the decision margin—altering how much of something is produced or which activity is chosen.
infra-marginal change
A change affecting activity a business is already doing, which does not alter its behavior at the decision margin—so a tax cut on it is pure benefit rather than an incentive to do anything new.
objectivists
Followers of Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism, cited here as an example of an intellectual atheist group with cult-like social attributes.
ARDA (Association of Religion Data Archives)
An online data repository (thearda.com) that lets users analyze standard religion surveys directly rather than relying on others' summaries.
pluralistic
A term sociologists use (where economists say 'competitive') to describe a religious landscape with many coexisting denominations.
sacrifice and stigma
Iannaccone's term for the costly, visible behaviors religious groups demand (dress codes, dietary rules, distinctive practices) that screen out free riders and signal commitment, enabling production of collective goods.
religious economies / religious market perspective
The social-scientific paradigm that analyzes religion as a competitive market of denominations (firms) responding to adherents (consumers), where freedom and competition drive vitality.
Free Exercise Clause
The First Amendment provision guaranteeing people the right to practice and form whatever religious associations they choose.
collective-action / free-rider problem
A situation where an individual cannot capture the full benefit of a costly action (e.g., sparing captives builds a reputation that mainly helps future crews), reducing the incentive to act unless the benefit can be internalized.
rent-seeking / extracting rents
Seeking to gain benefit by manipulating the social or political environment (e.g., currying favor with the quartermaster) or, in the leadership case, a capable leader capturing surplus from the crew rather than producing new value.
Jolly Roger
The skull-and-crossbones pirate flag, used as a signaling device to communicate that the attacker was an unconstrained outlaw pirate (who would brutalize resisters but spare those who surrendered), not a legally-restrained coast guard.
crying out for quarters
A merchant crew's signal of surrender, after which legally-constrained attackers (like coast guards) were not permitted to wantonly brutalize them.
pieces of eight
Spanish silver dollar coins used as currency, in which pirate workers' compensation payouts were denominated.
going on the account
The pirates' term for setting out on a piratical expedition.
ships articles
The written constitutions of pirate (and privateer) ships, establishing rules, distribution of pay, democratic decision-making, and other terms of the voyage.
Buccaneers
Multinational sea-roving outlaws operating roughly 1630–1690, intermediate between privateers and pure pirates, who fought as privateers during wars and turned to outright piracy afterward, using a 'chase party' as a proto-constitutional system.
quartermaster
On a pirate ship, an officer elected by the crew who held most day-to-day authority, enforced the rules, doled out punishment, allocated plunder, and acted in the crew's interest as a check on the captain (likened to a Roman Tribune).
separating hyperplane
A mathematical concept of a boundary dividing two classes; Henry uses it metaphorically for the dividing line between middle-income and very poor countries.
ICSID (International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes)
An international body for arbitrating disputes between investors and states; ruled Jamaica's bauxite levy was not an illegal expropriation.
bilateral vs multilateral aid
Aid given directly country-to-country (bilateral) versus through international institutions (multilateral); Henry notes multilateral aid has on average been more effective.
concessional loans
Loans offered on below-market terms (low interest, long maturities) by institutions like the World Bank's IDA or the IMF to poor countries.
HIPC initiative
The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative, providing debt relief to the world's poorest, debt-burdened countries; associated with the 2005 Gleneagles declaration.
Brady plan
A late-1980s/early-1990s US-led initiative to restructure and partially forgive the debt of middle-income (largely Latin American) developing countries, conditioned on policy reforms.
r-squared
A statistical measure of how much of the variation in an outcome (e.g., growth rates) is explained by the explanatory variables (e.g., institutions).
instrument (instrumental variable)
A statistical variable correlated with the cause of interest but not directly with the outcome, used to identify causation; here colonial origin/malaria is used as an instrument for institutions.
malaria belt
The band of the world with high malaria prevalence; areas outside it were more habitable for colonizers, who settled and built home-like institutions there.
English common law vs French civil law
Two legal traditions inherited from colonizers; common law (English) gives stronger protection to private property and creditors, while civil law (French) emphasizes individual property protection less.
no-haggle price
A fixed, posted price at which a good is sold without negotiation—contrasted with the bargaining model typical of cars and houses.
voluntary import restraints / voluntary restraint agreement
Negotiated limits in which an exporting country (Japan) 'voluntarily' caps the number of cars it ships to an importing country (the U.S.), functioning as a trade restriction without a formal tariff.
legacy costs
Long-term obligations a firm carries from past agreements, especially retiree healthcare and pension commitments negotiated with unions.
tied good
A product whose sale is contractually or practically linked to another product, such that buying one obligates or steers the buyer toward the other (e.g., a warranty tying service to the dealer).
P star (P*)
Economist's notation for the equilibrium or market-clearing price; used by Roberts to describe the 'true' price that haggling may reveal.
marginal buyer / marginal seller
The buyer and seller who are just indifferent between transacting or not at the prevailing market price; they are the participants whose behavior determines the market price at the margin.
franchise fee
The payment a dealer makes to a manufacturer for the right to be an authorized dealer of a particular brand; central to the legal provisions requiring repayment if a line is closed.
broken windows fallacy
The mistaken belief that destruction (e.g., breaking windows) creates net economic benefit by generating repair work, ignoring the unseen alternative uses of those resources (Bastiat's 'that which is not seen').
luxury goods
Goods (or here, policies like safety/environmental regulation) demand for which rises only as income rises, so they are valued only once a society reaches sufficient prosperity.
WARN Act
The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (1988), which requires employers to give 60 days notice before closing a plant, with related restrictions.
extended (unlimited) liability
A bank ownership structure in which shareholders are liable beyond their initial investment for the bank's debts, protecting depositors at the expense of shareholders.
fire-sale losses
Losses incurred when assets must be sold quickly at depressed prices ('pennies on the dollar') to raise cash, e.g., during a bank run.
notice of withdrawal clause
A contractual provision allowing a bank to require 60-90 days' notice before a depositor withdraws funds, acting as a circuit breaker against runs and fire-sale losses.
inelasticity of the currency
The inability of the banknote supply to expand to meet seasonal demand, caused by the National Banking Acts' ceiling on note issuance, which turned currency demand into reserve drains.
secondary deflation
A deflationary spiral following the initial liquidation of malinvestments, which some Austrians argued was overkill that the central bank should have offset.
equation of exchange (MV = PT)
An accounting identity stating that the money supply times its velocity equals the price level times the quantity of transactions (total spending equals total income).
stabilizationist (Stabilization-ist)
Proponents of stabilizing the price level via monetary policy; Hayek argued this caused the 1920s credit bubble.
distress borrowing
Borrowing undertaken to keep a long-gestation project alive after interest rates have risen, often on unfavorable terms.
time to build
A modeling concept (from Kydland and Prescott) recognizing that investment projects require continual outlays over time to reach completion rather than a single instantaneous investment.
roundabout production
Production methods involving longer, more capital-intensive stages between initial investment and final output; central to Austrian capital theory.
real bills doctrine
The idea that a central bank should supply credit to meet the 'legitimate needs of trade,' which Hayek criticized as accommodating excessive credit demand.
loanable funds
The pool of money available for borrowing in an economy; the supply and demand for it interact to set the interest rate.
savings constrained
A condition in which a person wants to save and values the future but cannot accumulate savings because holding money triggers social obligations and claims that dissipate it, yielding a negative effective return on saving.
credit constrained
A condition in which a person cannot borrow against future earnings even when they have profitable investment opportunities, due to lack of collateral or access to lenders.
discount rate (time preference)
The degree to which a person values present consumption over future consumption; a high discount rate means strongly preferring money now, a low one means willingness to wait for more later.
saving down
The inversion of the normal 'save up then spend' pattern: receiving a lump sum (a loan) up front, spending it immediately on consumption, then repaying it over time — effectively saving in reverse, enforced by group obligation.
reprivatization
Putin-era rhetoric about reversing or revisiting earlier privatizations on grounds they were ill-gotten; it generated regime uncertainty because investors feared it amounted to renationalization.
fiscal federalism, Chinese style
Weingast's account of how China decentralized fiscal authority via special economic zones and reverse revenue-sharing, letting enterprises keep surpluses and remit a fixed amount to the center, thereby creating growth-promoting incentives.
de jure vs de facto
The distinction between formal legal rules (de jure) and how things actually operate in practice (de facto); used to explain why Russia's legal reforms produced little real change while China's practical changes produced growth despite static laws.
incentive incompatible
A situation where the incentives created by a policy conflict with its stated goals, making the desired outcome impossible (e.g., paying people not to work while wanting them to return to work).
Separation of powers
The constitutional principle dividing government functions among branches; here, the concern that courts appropriating funds usurp the legislative power of the purse.
White flight
The movement of white families out of central-city school districts (partly to avoid racial balancing), which limited the reach of desegregation orders confined to individual jurisdictions.
Non-cognitive skills
Behavioral traits and attributes—such as punctuality, idea generation, and identifying with organizational goals—that matter for labor-market success beyond measured cognitive ability.
Charter schools
Publicly funded schools operating under state oversight but freed from many regulations (often including union teacher requirements), allowed to design their own programs and dependent on attracting students.
De jure / de facto segregation
De jure segregation is racial separation mandated by law (as in the pre-Brown South); de facto segregation is separation arising in practice without explicit legal mandate (as addressed in northern cases).
Value-added
The contribution a school or teacher makes to student achievement gains, isolated from students' starting points and outside factors.
Adequacy lawsuits
A later type of school finance lawsuit arguing that funding, even if equitably distributed, is simply insufficient to provide an adequate education, used to demand more total spending.
Equity lawsuits
School finance lawsuits seeking to equalize per-pupil spending across districts, typically by increasing the state's share of funding.
Equal Protection Clause
The provision of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution requiring that no state deny any person equal protection of the laws; invoked in Serrano v. Priest to challenge unequal school funding.
test item bank
A large pool of test questions covering a subject's full range of content, from which exams are randomly drawn so teaching to the test means teaching the whole content domain.
accountability movement
The policy push to measure and publicly report student performance to hold schools and teachers responsible for outcomes.
single salary schedule
A union-bargained pay matrix that sets teacher salaries solely by years of experience and amount of graduate education, ignoring specialty and quality.
percentile (distribution of teachers)
A ranking position in a distribution; an 85th-percentile teacher is better than 85% of teachers, used to quantify the gap between average and good teachers.
achievement growth (value-added)
Measuring teacher effectiveness by how much student achievement increases in a year relative to where students started, rather than absolute test levels.
controlling for other factors
Statistically holding constant variables like family background and teacher differences to isolate the effect of the variable of interest.
random assignment experiment
A study design that randomly assigns subjects to treatment or control groups to isolate causal effects, used in the Tennessee class-size experiment.
pupil-teacher ratio
The number of students per teacher; lowering it (smaller classes) was a key reform that increased spending without raising outcomes.
selectivity bias / selection bias
A statistical problem where apparent teacher effects are confounded because high-performing students may be non-randomly assigned to certain teachers, making good students rather than good teaching drive the measured gains.
last in first out (LIFO)
A seniority-based layoff rule requiring that the most recently hired teachers be dismissed first, regardless of their effectiveness.
rubber room
A facility where incompetent or under-investigation teachers are paid to sit away from students while removal proceedings or due-process delays play out.