Does transparent leadership promote cooperative groups? We address this issue using a public goods experiment with exogenously selected leaders who are able to send non-binding contribution suggestions to the group. To investigate the effect of transparency in this setting we vary the ease with...

Why did the classical economists' doctrine of innate human sociability and the problem of factions disappear? The social Darwinists who clustered around The Economist regarded sympathy, the social glue of small groups, as an impediment to racial perfection that allowed the "unfit" to survive....

Between 1960 and 1980 American economics textbooks overestimated Soviet growth. They held that the Soviet economy was growing faster than the US economy and yet they kept the ratio of Soviet–US output constant over two decades. The textbooks downplayed any uncertainty associated with such...

Between 1960 and 1980 American economics textbooks overestimated Soviet growth. They held that the Soviet economy was growing faster than the US economy and yet they kept the ratio of Soviet-US output constant over two decades. The textbooks downplayed any uncertainty associated with such growth...

We examine the competing views of two sets of "experts" in a historical context, the Bradlaugh- Besant trial of 1877. The case was ostensibly about what constituted "obscenity" and whether, specifically, republishing a book at low cost that contained information on contraception, was obscene....

Previous research offers compelling evidence that leaders suffice to effect efficiency-enhancements on cooperation, yet the source of this effect remains unclear. To investigate whether leadership effects can be attributed exclusively to the common information that leaders provide to a group,...

We present a model in which price dispersion allows the market to remain competitive in the long run amidst increasing returns to scale. The model hinges upon turnover in the productive technology-leading firm, price dispersion resultant of Stigler's logic of rational search, and limited...