Does foreign military assistance strengthen or further weaken fragile states facing internal conflict? Aid may strengthen the state by bolstering its repressive capacity vis-à-vis armed non-state actors, or weaken it if resources are diverted to these very groups. We examine how U.S. military...

The purpose of this paper is to convince the reader that the Continental dollar was a zero-interest bearer bond and not a fiat currency--thereby overturning 230 years of scholarly interpretation; to show that the public and leading Americans knew and acted on this fact, and to illustrate the...

This paper explores the relationship between investment and political violence through several possible mechanisms. Investment as a predictor of future violence implies that low private sector investment today provides a robust indicator of high violence tomorrow. "Rent-capture" or predation...

The literature relating economic activity to political violence posits greedy rebels (Collier, 2000) but not greedy governments. Could capturing tax revenue motivate governments to step up their counter insurgency operations, just as extortion motivates rebel violence? Panel data on political...

Recent military engagements in Iraq (OIF) and Afghanistan (OEF) raise questions about the effects on service members of overseas deployment, which can include service in a combat or war zone, exposure to casualties, or both. The 2010 National Survey of Veterans, which asked a broad cross section...

Conventional wisdom holds that the social rate of return to R&D significantly exceeds the private rate of return and, therefore, R&D should be subsidized. In the U.S., the government has directly funded a large fraction of total R&D spending. This paper shows that there is a serious problem with...

The Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002 (TRIA) established a public-private program to cover commercial enterprises against foreign terrorism on US soil. It was a temporary measure to increase the availability of risk coverage for terrorist acts by requiring insurers to provide coverage....

Historians have long recognized the role of economic resources and organization in determining the outcome of World War II: the Nazi economy lacked the economic resources and organization to oppose the combined might of the U.S., U.K., and U.S.S.R. A minority view is that the Germans were...

Draft lottery number assignment during the Vietnam Era provides a natural experiment to examine the effects of military service on crime. Using exact dates of birth for inmates in state and federal prisons in 1979, 1986, and 1991, we find that draft eligibility increases incarceration for...

An alternative history of the Continental dollar is constructed from original sources and tested against evidence on prices and exchange rates. The Continental dollar was a zero-interest bearer bond, not a pure fiat currency. The public was promised redemption at face value in specie at fixed...