Main description: What can today's corporate raiders learn from the scourge of the high seas? A lot, as it turns out! Pirates have a surprising amount to teach about building better organizations, promoting diversity in the workplace, and creating powerful brands, among many other business...

The invisible hook -- Vote for Blackbeard. The economics of pirate democracy -- An-arrgh-chy. The economics of the pirate code -- Skull & bones. The economics of the Jolly Roger -- Walk the plank. The economics of pirate torture -- Pressing pegleg. The economics of pirate conscription -- Equal...

Why do criminals use constitutions? This paper argues that constitutions perform three critical functions in criminal organizations. First, criminal constitutions promote consensus by creating common knowledge among criminals about what the organization expects of them and what they can expect...

Is a genuine social contract mythical? I argue that pirates created genuine social contracts that established a system of constitutional democracy based on the same decision making calculus and with the same effects that Buchanan and Tullock's contractarian theory of government describes in The...

This paper investigates the industrial organization of criminal enterprise. We argue that differences in contestability across criminal industries crucially shape how producers in these industries organize. In more contestable criminal industries, producers use organizational hierarchy as a...