I’m Associate Professor in the Department of Political Economy and Moral Science at University of Arizona, and the Director of Graduate Studies of the Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) program. I have previously been the Department Head.
I’m currently in the process of finishing Understanding Capitalism: An Introduction to Political Economy (under contract with Polity Press), and The Allure of the Liberal Dictator (2 volumes of Cambridge Elements, under contract with Cambridge University Press), co-authored with Andrew Farrant. I am also co-editing The Elgar Companion to PPE (under contract with Elgar Publishing) with Chad Van Schoelandt.
My latest papers cover the following topics: building an economic model of how people choose their personal identities and undergo profound transformative experiences (“Role Models” forthcoming in Public Choice); the changing dynamic of status competitions in rich societies leading to the proliferation of conflicting groups (“Polycentric Status Contests”); a synthesis of the Buchanan-Wagner perspective on the biases in public finance, leading to inefficient levels of public debt (“The politics of public finance”).
Broadly speaking, my main research interests are in political economy, institutional economics, varieties of capitalism, and history of economic thought. Most of my work falls mainly in two larger research projects: (1) The political economy and institutional theory of polycentric governance, with a focus on the question of resilience. (2) The comparative evaluation of the performance of capitalist systems, and the analysis of the regulatory regimes and public administration.
I have published papers in American Political Science Review, Governance, Business and Politics, Comparative Economic Studies, Southern Economic Journal, Public Choice, Constitutional Political Economy, Journal of Institutional Economics, Kyklos, Social Philosophy & Policy, Review of Austrian Economics, Comparative Economic Studies, Journal of Economic Methodology, and others.
I’m the author of Elinor Ostrom: An Intellectual Biography (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017), co-author with Paul Dragos Aligica of Capitalist Alternatives: Models, Taxonomies, Scenarios (Routledge, 2015), co-author with Paul Dragos Aligica and Peter Boettke of Public Governance and the Classical Liberal Perspective (Oxford University Press, 2019), co-editor with Jayme Lemke of Elinor Ostrom and the Bloomington School: Building a New Approach to Policy and the Social Sciences (Agenda Publishing / Columbia University Press, 2021).
I’ve previously been assistant professor of economics at Dickinson College from 2015 to 2019. I have a PhD in economics from George Mason University (2015), where I was also a Mercatus Center Graduate Research Fellow. I have a physics bachelor degree (2003) and a plasma physics master degree (2005). I have worked at the Center for Institutional Analysis and Development in Bucharest, Romania for five years (2007-2011).
At University of Arizona I’ve taught “Foundations of Economics”, “Capitalism and Socialism”, “Economic Analysis of the Law”, “Classics in the History of Political Economy”, “Data Science for Social Science”, “Introduction to Global Priorities”, in the PPEL major. At Dickinson College I have taught microeconomics (principles and intermediate), and various electives on political economy, entrepreneurship, institutional and development economics, and statistical methods.
Vlad Tarko 