This pathbreaking book seeks to be the definitive collection documenting the intellectual legacy of Ludwig von Mises in modern political economy. Its intended readership is scholars in the history of political economy and in particular those interested in the Austrian school of economics.

Most models of Central and Eastern European transition fail to appreciate the "de facto" organising principles that governed life in the Soviet--type system. Concentration has instead been focused on the "de jure" pronouncements of what constituted these systems. It is this misidentification, we...

Research examining the importance of path dependence and culture for institutions and development tells us that "history matters," but not "how" history matters. To provide this missing "how," we provide a framework for understanding institutional "stickiness" based on the regression theorem....

This paper argues that there are two tiers of entrepreneurship important for economic development. One is concerned with investments in productive technologies that improve productivity and better service consumer needs. The other is concerned with the creation of protective technologies that...

The Elgar Companion to Hayekian Economics provides an in-depth treatment of Friedrich August von Hayek’s economic thought from his technical economics of the 1920s and 1930s to his broader views on the spontaneous order of a free society. Taken together, the chapters show evidence both of...

For over a century, English husbands sold their wives at auctions. We argue that wife sales were an institutional response to an unusual constellation of property rights in Industrial Revolution-era English law. That constellation simultaneously required most wives to obtain their husbands'...

This paper develops a theory of rational human sacrifice: the purchase and ritual slaughter of innocent persons to appease divinities. I argue that human sacrifice is a technology for protecting property rights. It improves property protection by destroying part of sacrificing communities'...

Media, Development, and Institutional Change investigates mass media’s profound ability to affect institutional change and economic development. The authors use the tools of economics to illuminate the media’s role in enabling and inhibiting political–economic reforms that promote development.