Classic Big Push industrialization envisions state planners coordinating economic activity to internalize a range of externalities that otherwise lock in a low-income equilibrium, but runs afoul of well-known government failure problems. Successful Big Push coordination may occur instead when a...

Historical literature on the causes of the Pacific War generally focuses on either international relationships between the great powers in the interwar period or on the role of domestic interest groups in Japan, especially the Imperial Army and Navy. An alternative to these predominantly...

We show that when democratic and autocratic governments peacefully compete for governance over the same jurisdiction the autocratic has a natural advantage. The autocratic government, which unambiguously reduces welfare for everyone except the autocrat, will drive the competing democratic...

This paper examines the problem of renegotiation of infrastructure concessions in Latin America using a model of litigation with an application to incentive contracts. Opportunistic renegotiation is here defined as a rent seeking game, to show the effect of the legal system characteristics in...

Gordon Tullock’s impact as a scholar was far broader than his own research because he was an initiator of new fields of research rather than one who modestly extended pre-existing pastures. His import as founding editor of Public Choice, as an ambassador for public choice, and as a teacher,...