Julius Caesar and Cornelius Tacitus provide characterizations of early Germanic (barbarian) society around, respectively, 50 BC and 50 AD. The earlier date corresponds to expansion of Rome to the Rhine and Danube. During the subsequent century Germanic governance institutions changed in a number...

We examine the empirical relationship between the institutions of economic freedom and labor shares in a panel of up to 93 countries covering 1970 through 2009. We find that a standard deviation increase in the Fraser Institute's Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) score is associated with about...

A roving bandit provides exclusive (rivalrous) collective goods to members of its in- group. A stationary bandit further provides inclusive (nonrivalrous; public) collective goods to the out-group. The inclusive goods are an input to the production of the exclusive goods enjoyed by the in-group....

How do a government arise from anarchy? In a classic article, Mancur Olson (1993) theorized that it could occur when a roving bandit decides to settle down. This stationary bandit comes to recognize an encompassing interest in its territory, improving its lot by providing governing and...

Successful constitutionalism is characterized by de jure Constitutional provisions de facto binding political agents. A growing literature seeks to quantify cross-country variation in Constitutional compliance and explore its determinants (e.g., Law & Versteeg 2013; Gutmann et al. 2022; Voigt 2021). We...

We examine the empirical relationship between the institutions of economic freedom and labor shares in a panel up to 93 countries covering 1970 through 2009. We find that a standard deviation increase in the Fraser Institute's Economic Freedom of the World (EFW) score is associated about 1/3...

Tsebelis and Nardi (2016) and Tsebelis (2017) report that constitutional length correlates with lower levels of GDP per capita. They argue that this may be the case because longer constitutions lead to greater corruption. However, uncovering a causal relationship between constitutional length...

The standard political economy narrative of representative assemblies in Western Europe is one of political bargaining and credible commitments. Monarchs sought to bargain with the leading men of the realms, exchanging their commitments on various policies for revenues and other resources. This...

We develop a theory of self-enforcing monetary constitutions. A monetary constitution is the framework of rules within which money-providing and money-using agents interact. A self-enforcing monetary constitutions is upheld by the agents acting within the system; it thus does not require...

Since the 2008 financial crisis, a number of economists have suggested that central banks should follow an NGDP targeting rule. Other researchers have argued that a free and unregulated banking system stabilizes NGDP growth as an unintended consequence. We explore this argument in a simple model...