We empirically investigate the degree of integration that existed prior to the cost increases that caused emergency conditions in the Western Systems Coordinating Council (WSCC), particularly California, during the summer of 2000. Evidence from Granger causality tests and common features...

Purpose: This paper aims to examine how economic freedom impacts the initial choice of legal structure for startup firms. The authors do this by first exploring whether economic freedom is an essential determinant of the initial legal form of organization (LFO). The authors then explore the...

Continuous violent conflict is a central cause of economic stagnation in many of the world's poorest countries. Given that attempts to achieve peace in these countries often remain elusive, it is important to identify mechanisms which reveal the sustainability of peace over time. We argue that...

By defining political economy and war in the broadest sense, this unique Handbook brings together a wide range of interdisciplinary scholars from economics, political science, sociology, and policy studies to address a multitude of important topics. These include an analysis of why wars begin,...

Structural change models are potentially ideal for abstracting from a “watershed” event like the U.S. Civil War, in that they seek to explain the transformation of economies from agricultural to industrial on the basis of labor movement and incentives rather than on technical changes. We...