Dr. Mahathir is often credited with Malaysia’s economic success post-1980. However, it is well known that the Mahathir regime centralized power in the Office of the Prime Minister and extended state capacity, creating a system of government susceptible to corruption. This corruption eventually...

What role does government play in the provision of public goods? Economists have used the lighthouse as an empirical example to illustrate the extent to which the private provision of public goods is possible. This inquiry, however, has neglected the private provision of lightships. We...

Lighthouses are the quintessential public goods and thus are used as a key example of market failure. However, little attention has been devoted to how lighthouse systems operated once governments took charge of remedying the public goods problem. We exploit the fact that Antebellum America came...

Lighthouses are the quintessential public goods and thus constitute a key illustration of market failure in need of government remedy. Considerable debates have been waged over whether optimal private provision was historically possible. However, little to no attention has been devoted to how...

What is the relationship, if any, between economic freedom and pandemics? This paper addresses this question from a robust political economy approach. As is the case with recovery from natural disasters or warfare, a society that is relatively free economically offers economic actors greater...