Public choice economists began studying the economics of anarchy in the 1970s. Since then, the amount of research on anarchy has burgeoned. This article surveys the important public choice contributions to the economics of anarchy. Following the lead of the early public choice economists, many...

Most people do not even consider the idea that society can be organized without a state. Anarchism is simply too idealistic or too different from the current world. But does that prove that a stateless society is unworkable or that it should not be pursued? Or does that prove that most social...

The book reprints the main articles from the 1972 volume Explorations in the Theory of Anarchy, and contains a response to each chapter, as well as new comments by Gordon Tullock, James Buchanan, Jeffrey Rogers Hummel and Peter Boettke. The younger economists are notably less pessimistic about...