Nick Cowen
Biographic Data
| ID | 4330519 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nick Cowen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nick |
| FAMILY NAME | Cowen |
| SIGNATURE | COWEN N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Lincoln |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7039-8999 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 26 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Queering the curriculum in risk society
This article explores findings from a study about the challenges of delivering LGBTQ+ inclusive curricula in primary and secondary schools. We identify several barriers preventing LGBTQ+ enriched curricula being delivered, including limited school confidence; opposition from the wider school community; and opaque national policies. It is recommended that LGBTQ+ focused national and school-level policies are developed to support inclusive teaching…
The Problem of Governance
This essay critically examines Dan Greenwood’s Effective Governance and the Political Economy of Coordination. Greenwood’s book offers a compelling framework for evaluating government policy, drawing insights from the Austrian and Bloomington schools of political economy. His central argument is that governance is more effective at “steering” markets toward broad goals rather than directly providing goods and services. He builds this case on Haye…
Democracy as a competitive discovery process
Actors within democracies and markets exhibit opportunistic behavior and frequently pervasive ignorance. But the debate on whether these social systems can handle these problems is polarized. Critics of markets point to corporate greed and consumer exploitation, placing faith in democracy as the antidote; while critics of democracy highlight rent-seeking, public ignorance and limited knowledge for decisionmakers, prioritizing markets over democra…
Bespoke science
Many governments formed ad hoc scientific advisory committees in the Covid-19 pandemic because they offered the government greater control over policy advice than standing agencies. The difference between ad hoc and standing advisory bodies has been little noted in the literature. High-uncertainty crises demanding expertise and requiring action from the national government increase the value of policy discretion, raising the value of controlling …
Market Participation, Self-respect, and Risk Tolerance
How important is the experience of risk in business endeavors for self-respect and moral development? Tomasi prompts this question with his attempt to reconcile Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness with free-market capitalism, by claiming that economic activity is a way for people to exercise their autonomy, responsibility, and self-authorship, including through voluntary risk-taking. Critics argue that the social environment generated through m…
Novel externalities
Novel externalities are social activities for which the emerging cost (or benefit) of the spillover is unknown and must be discovered. Negative novel externalities have regained international salience following the COVID-19 pandemic. Such cases frequently are invoked as evidence of the limits of liberal political economy for dealing with public emergencies. Through a re-reading of classical political economy with the modern state’s confrontation …
Is Public Ignorance a Problem? An Epistemic Defense of Really Existing Democracies
Does good governance require citizens to be knowledgeable of basic facts and best policy ideas? Some scholars suggest that it does, and propose disenfranchising the most ‘ignorant’ voters. In contrast, we argue, political systems are complex systems inevitably exhibiting incomplete, imperfect and asymmetric information that is dynamically generated in society from actors with diverse life experiences, antagonistic interests and often profoundly d…
Classical deterrence theory revisited
The severity, certainty and celerity (swiftness) of punishment are theorised to influence offending through deterrence. Yet celerity is rarely included in empirical studies of criminal activity and the three deterrence factors have never been analysed in one empirical model. We address this gap with an analysis using unique panel data of recorded theft, burglary and violence against the person for 41 Police Force Areas in England and Wales using …
Sexual and gender identity work on social media
How do sexual and gender minorities use social media to express themselves and construct their identities? We discuss findings drawn from focus groups conducted with 17 sexual and gender minority social media users who shared their experiences of online harms. They include people with gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, queer, asexual, non‐binary, pansexual, poly, and kink (LGBTQ+) identities. We find that sexual and gender minorities face several cha…
Capital, Ideology, and the Liberal Order
Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology (2020) offers a powerful critique of ideological justifications for inequality in capitalist societies. Does this mean we should reject capitalist institutions altogether? This paper defends some aspects of capitalism by explaining the epistemic function of market economies and their ability to harness capital to meet the needs of the relatively disadvantaged. We support this classical liberal position with r…
Hayek
Basic Economic Liberties
Ostrom, Floods and Mismatched Property Rights
How societies can cope with flood risk along coasts and riverbanks is a critical theoretical and empirical problem – particularly in the wake of anthropogenic climate change and the increased severity of floods. An example of this challenge is the growing costs of publicly-funded flood defense in Britain and popular outcries during the regular occasions that the British government fails to protect property and land during heavy rains. Traditional…
Hayek versus Trump
Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom has been interpreted as a general warning against state intervention in the economy. We review this argument in conjunction with Hayek’s later work and discern an institutional thesis about which forms of state intervention and economic institutions could threaten personal and political freedom. Economic institutions pose a threat if they allow for coercive interventions as described by Hayek in The Constitution of Lib…
The mirage of mark-to-market
Substantially increased wealth inequality across the developed world has prompted many philosophers, economists and legal theorists to support comprehensive taxes on all forms of wealth. Proposals include levying taxes on the basis of total wealth, or alternatively the change in the value of capital holdings measured from year-to-year. This contrasts with most existing policies that tax capital assets at the point they are transferred from one be…
Alternatives to Custody
England and Wales have some of the highest incarceration rates in the developed world. Recent policy reforms have focused on developing alternatives to custody that offer credible protection for the public, and justice for victims of crime. This article uses unique detailed panel-level data acquired from the Ministry of Justice for all Police Force Areas from 2002 to 2013 in England and Wales to analyse the effects of custodial and non-custodial …
Aris Trantidis
Randomized Controlled Trials
Evidence-based” methods, which most prominently include randomized controlled trials, have gained increasing purchase as the “gold standard” for assessing the effect of public policies. But the enthusiasm for evidence-based research overlooks questions about the reliability and applicability of experimental findings to diverse real-world settings. Perhaps surprisingly, a qualitative study of British educators suggests that they are aware of these…
Millian Liberalism and Extreme Pornography
How sexuality should be regulated in a liberal political community is an important, controversial theoretical and empirical question—as shown by the recent criminalization of possession of some adult pornography in the United Kingdom. Supporters of criminalization argue that Mill, often considered a staunch opponent of censorship, would support prohibition due to his feminist commitments. I argue that this account underestimates the strengths of …
Introduction
Mark Pennington’s Robust Political Economy is a systematic exposition of a framework for analyzing institutional performance. The Robust Political Economy framework evaluates institutions according to their ability to solve knowledge and incentive problems. On grounds of robustness, Pennington combines insights from Austrian market-process theory and public-choice theory to defend classical liberalism from several compelling critiques. These incl…
Novel externalities
Novel externalities are social activities for which the emerging cost (or benefit) of the spillover is unknown and must be discovered. Negative novel externalities have regained international salience following the COVID-19 pandemic. Such cases frequently are invoked as evidence of the limits of liberal political economy for dealing with public emergencies. Through a re-reading of classical political economy with the modern state’s confrontation …
Randomized Controlled Trials
Evidence-based” methods, which most prominently include randomized controlled trials, have gained increasing purchase as the “gold standard” for assessing the effect of public policies. But the enthusiasm for evidence-based research overlooks questions about the reliability and applicability of experimental findings to diverse real-world settings. Perhaps surprisingly, a qualitative study of British educators suggests that they are aware of these…
Hayek versus Trump
Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom has been interpreted as a general warning against state intervention in the economy. We review this argument in conjunction with Hayek’s later work and discern an institutional thesis about which forms of state intervention and economic institutions could threaten personal and political freedom. Economic institutions pose a threat if they allow for coercive interventions as described by Hayek in The Constitution of Lib…
Is Public Ignorance a Problem? An Epistemic Defense of Really Existing Democracies
Does good governance require citizens to be knowledgeable of basic facts and best policy ideas? Some scholars suggest that it does, and propose disenfranchising the most ‘ignorant’ voters. In contrast, we argue, political systems are complex systems inevitably exhibiting incomplete, imperfect and asymmetric information that is dynamically generated in society from actors with diverse life experiences, antagonistic interests and often profoundly d…
Sexual and gender identity work on social media
How do sexual and gender minorities use social media to express themselves and construct their identities? We discuss findings drawn from focus groups conducted with 17 sexual and gender minority social media users who shared their experiences of online harms. They include people with gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, queer, asexual, non‐binary, pansexual, poly, and kink (LGBTQ+) identities. We find that sexual and gender minorities face several cha…
Ostrom, Floods and Mismatched Property Rights
How societies can cope with flood risk along coasts and riverbanks is a critical theoretical and empirical problem – particularly in the wake of anthropogenic climate change and the increased severity of floods. An example of this challenge is the growing costs of publicly-funded flood defense in Britain and popular outcries during the regular occasions that the British government fails to protect property and land during heavy rains. Traditional…
Bespoke science
Many governments formed ad hoc scientific advisory committees in the Covid-19 pandemic because they offered the government greater control over policy advice than standing agencies. The difference between ad hoc and standing advisory bodies has been little noted in the literature. High-uncertainty crises demanding expertise and requiring action from the national government increase the value of policy discretion, raising the value of controlling …
Capital, Ideology, and the Liberal Order
Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology (2020) offers a powerful critique of ideological justifications for inequality in capitalist societies. Does this mean we should reject capitalist institutions altogether? This paper defends some aspects of capitalism by explaining the epistemic function of market economies and their ability to harness capital to meet the needs of the relatively disadvantaged. We support this classical liberal position with r…
Alternatives to Custody
England and Wales have some of the highest incarceration rates in the developed world. Recent policy reforms have focused on developing alternatives to custody that offer credible protection for the public, and justice for victims of crime. This article uses unique detailed panel-level data acquired from the Ministry of Justice for all Police Force Areas from 2002 to 2013 in England and Wales to analyse the effects of custodial and non-custodial …
Millian Liberalism and Extreme Pornography
How sexuality should be regulated in a liberal political community is an important, controversial theoretical and empirical question—as shown by the recent criminalization of possession of some adult pornography in the United Kingdom. Supporters of criminalization argue that Mill, often considered a staunch opponent of censorship, would support prohibition due to his feminist commitments. I argue that this account underestimates the strengths of …
Introduction
Mark Pennington’s Robust Political Economy is a systematic exposition of a framework for analyzing institutional performance. The Robust Political Economy framework evaluates institutions according to their ability to solve knowledge and incentive problems. On grounds of robustness, Pennington combines insights from Austrian market-process theory and public-choice theory to defend classical liberalism from several compelling critiques. These incl…
Aris Trantidis
Randomized Controlled Trials
Evidence-based” methods, which most prominently include randomized controlled trials, have gained increasing purchase as the “gold standard” for assessing the effect of public policies. But the enthusiasm for evidence-based research overlooks questions about the reliability and applicability of experimental findings to diverse real-world settings. Perhaps surprisingly, a qualitative study of British educators suggests that they are aware of these…
The mirage of mark-to-market
Substantially increased wealth inequality across the developed world has prompted many philosophers, economists and legal theorists to support comprehensive taxes on all forms of wealth. Proposals include levying taxes on the basis of total wealth, or alternatively the change in the value of capital holdings measured from year-to-year. This contrasts with most existing policies that tax capital assets at the point they are transferred from one be…
Alternatives to Custody
England and Wales have some of the highest incarceration rates in the developed world. Recent policy reforms have focused on developing alternatives to custody that offer credible protection for the public, and justice for victims of crime. This article uses unique detailed panel-level data acquired from the Ministry of Justice for all Police Force Areas from 2002 to 2013 in England and Wales to analyse the effects of custodial and non-custodial …
Hayek
Basic Economic Liberties
Ostrom, Floods and Mismatched Property Rights
How societies can cope with flood risk along coasts and riverbanks is a critical theoretical and empirical problem – particularly in the wake of anthropogenic climate change and the increased severity of floods. An example of this challenge is the growing costs of publicly-funded flood defense in Britain and popular outcries during the regular occasions that the British government fails to protect property and land during heavy rains. Traditional…
Hayek versus Trump
Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom has been interpreted as a general warning against state intervention in the economy. We review this argument in conjunction with Hayek’s later work and discern an institutional thesis about which forms of state intervention and economic institutions could threaten personal and political freedom. Economic institutions pose a threat if they allow for coercive interventions as described by Hayek in The Constitution of Lib…
Capital, Ideology, and the Liberal Order
Thomas Piketty’s Capital and Ideology (2020) offers a powerful critique of ideological justifications for inequality in capitalist societies. Does this mean we should reject capitalist institutions altogether? This paper defends some aspects of capitalism by explaining the epistemic function of market economies and their ability to harness capital to meet the needs of the relatively disadvantaged. We support this classical liberal position with r…
Classical deterrence theory revisited
The severity, certainty and celerity (swiftness) of punishment are theorised to influence offending through deterrence. Yet celerity is rarely included in empirical studies of criminal activity and the three deterrence factors have never been analysed in one empirical model. We address this gap with an analysis using unique panel data of recorded theft, burglary and violence against the person for 41 Police Force Areas in England and Wales using …
Sexual and gender identity work on social media
How do sexual and gender minorities use social media to express themselves and construct their identities? We discuss findings drawn from focus groups conducted with 17 sexual and gender minority social media users who shared their experiences of online harms. They include people with gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, queer, asexual, non‐binary, pansexual, poly, and kink (LGBTQ+) identities. We find that sexual and gender minorities face several cha…
Market Participation, Self-respect, and Risk Tolerance
How important is the experience of risk in business endeavors for self-respect and moral development? Tomasi prompts this question with his attempt to reconcile Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness with free-market capitalism, by claiming that economic activity is a way for people to exercise their autonomy, responsibility, and self-authorship, including through voluntary risk-taking. Critics argue that the social environment generated through m…
Novel externalities
Novel externalities are social activities for which the emerging cost (or benefit) of the spillover is unknown and must be discovered. Negative novel externalities have regained international salience following the COVID-19 pandemic. Such cases frequently are invoked as evidence of the limits of liberal political economy for dealing with public emergencies. Through a re-reading of classical political economy with the modern state’s confrontation …
Is Public Ignorance a Problem? An Epistemic Defense of Really Existing Democracies
Does good governance require citizens to be knowledgeable of basic facts and best policy ideas? Some scholars suggest that it does, and propose disenfranchising the most ‘ignorant’ voters. In contrast, we argue, political systems are complex systems inevitably exhibiting incomplete, imperfect and asymmetric information that is dynamically generated in society from actors with diverse life experiences, antagonistic interests and often profoundly d…
The Problem of Governance
This essay critically examines Dan Greenwood’s Effective Governance and the Political Economy of Coordination. Greenwood’s book offers a compelling framework for evaluating government policy, drawing insights from the Austrian and Bloomington schools of political economy. His central argument is that governance is more effective at “steering” markets toward broad goals rather than directly providing goods and services. He builds this case on Haye…
Democracy as a competitive discovery process
Actors within democracies and markets exhibit opportunistic behavior and frequently pervasive ignorance. But the debate on whether these social systems can handle these problems is polarized. Critics of markets point to corporate greed and consumer exploitation, placing faith in democracy as the antidote; while critics of democracy highlight rent-seeking, public ignorance and limited knowledge for decisionmakers, prioritizing markets over democra…
Bespoke science
Many governments formed ad hoc scientific advisory committees in the Covid-19 pandemic because they offered the government greater control over policy advice than standing agencies. The difference between ad hoc and standing advisory bodies has been little noted in the literature. High-uncertainty crises demanding expertise and requiring action from the national government increase the value of policy discretion, raising the value of controlling …
Queering the curriculum in risk society
This article explores findings from a study about the challenges of delivering LGBTQ+ inclusive curricula in primary and secondary schools. We identify several barriers preventing LGBTQ+ enriched curricula being delivered, including limited school confidence; opposition from the wider school community; and opaque national policies. It is recommended that LGBTQ+ focused national and school-level policies are developed to support inclusive teaching…
Political science (19 works) · Economics (15 works) · Law (14 works) · Politics (11 works) · Law (9 works) · Law and economics (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Economic Theory and Institutions (6 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (6 works) · Psychology (6 works)