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...

In bringing economic analysis to bear on the settlement of legal disputes, it is commonly presumed that the parties to the dispute are governed by the principles of private property and so are residual claimants to their legal expenses. This institutional framework promotes a substantive...

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...

National defense is the hard case for the voluntary provision of public goods because without recourse to taxation it is difficult to overcome the free rider problem, much less provide defense superior to that of government provision because of the tremendous costs associated with national...

In bringing economic analysis to bear on whether a dispute is settled without trial, the presumed institutional setting is typically one of private property where the parties are residual claimants to their legal expenses. Many disputes, however, are between private and public parties. In these...

All governments are potential police states. Constitutionally constrained democracies are no exception, as demonstrated by America’s post-9/11 experience. In the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks, the U.S. government expanded its domestic police powers in the name of protecting the...

This paper uses Vincent Ostrom’s treatment of democracy as entailing a Faustian bargain to explore some challenges that confront his research program into the theory of human association. To carry this exploration, I concentrate on Ostrom’s 1997 book, The Meaning of Democracy and the...

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...

We stand at a critical juncture in U.S. foreign policy. The challenges facing the United States and the world are unique, myriad, and perpetual. We provide a playbook for the national-security elites for how to efficiently run wars. This playbook is intended only for the political elites. Great...