Usually, groups increase their productivity by the specialization of their group members. In these cases, group output is no longer simply a sum of individual outputs. We analyze contests with group-specific public goods that allow for different degrees of complementarity between group...

Contests between groups are plagued by intra-group externalities (freeriding).Yet, costless incentive schemes that entirely avoid free-riding within a group might not be desirable, neither individually nor socially. In contests among two groups, a relatively weak (i.e., small or unproductive)...

Violent conflict destroy resources. It generates "destruction costs." These costs have an important effect on individual's decisions to cooperate or conflict. We develop two models of conflict: one in which conflict's destruction costs are independent of individuals' investment in "arms" - the...

Economists commonly use the Edgeworth box to illustrate the ability of exchange to generate gains from trade. In contrast to this framework of dyadic exchange, we explore triadic forms of exchange where margins of coercion are also present. In the presence of triadic exchange, market...

This paper uses Vincent Ostrom's treatment of government as entailing a Faustian bargain to explore some challenges that confront the research program he pursued in the theory of human association. To enable this exploration, I replace the standard resort to the law of the excluded middle with...

The present paper analyzes the occurrence of the group-size paradox in situations in which groups compete for rents, allowing for degrees of rivalness of the rent among group members. We provide two intuitive criteria which for groups with homogenous valuations of the rent determine whether...

The U.S. government is the dominant player in the global arms market. An existing literature emphasizes the many benefits of an international U.S.-government arms monopoly including: regional and global balance, stability and security, the advancement of U.S. national interests, and domestic...

This paper connects the theory of the market process to scholarship on nonviolent action. Doing so advances market process theory by bringing its interaction with nonviolent action and its peace-building potential to the forefront. It advances scholarship on nonviolent action by extending the...

Paternalism is an attempt to influence individuals’ decisions for their own benefit, even if there are no third parties involved. This seems to contradict normative individualism, which provides the general orientation to our modern democracies. Soft or libertarian paternalism accepts the...

The term “tax state” originated in a controversy between Rudolf Goldscheid and Joseph Schumpeter over the treatment of Austria's public debt in the aftermath of World War I and the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Goldschied asserted that this debt represented a crisis for a state...