This article seeks to explain why Spanish merino wools arrived so late in the Low Countries, only from the 1420s, why initially only those cloth producers known as the 'nouvelles draperies' chose to use them, and why their resort to such merino wools allowed at least some of them to escape the...

We examine the long-term links between state capacity and economic performance. Our database is novel and spans 11 countries and 4 centuries in Europe, the birthplace of modern economic growth. A dynamic simultaneous equation panel model indicates that the performance effects of states with...

How did modern and centralized fiscal institutions emerge? We develop a model that explains (i) why pre-industrial states relied on private individuals to collect taxes; (ii) why after 1600 both England and France moved from competitive methods for collecting revenues to allocating the right to...

Some states treat a same-sex marriage as legally equal to a marriage between a man and a woman. Other states prohibit legal recognition of same-sex marriages in their constitutions. In every state that has a constitutional restriction against same-sex marriage, the amendment was passed by a...

The demographic database of Eurostat and of Us Census of Bureau are explored and the main facts are extracted and described. This paper is completely self-standing but is also part of a more general analysis dedicated to the functioning and sustainability of pay-as-you-go to finance the welfare...

This article, explore the origin of public choice compared with the traditional view of political science. The emphasize is on the methodology and the initial research program developed by Buchanan and Tullock.

We investigate the possible explanations of variations in aggregate levels of participation in large-scale political demonstrations. A simple public choice inspired model is applied to data derived from the annual May Day demonstrations of the Danish labour movement and socialist parties taking...