This book offers an analytical explanation for the origins of and change in property institutions on the American frontier during the nineteenth century. Its scope is interdisciplinary, integrating insights from political science, economics, law, and history. This book shows how claim clubs -...

This note considers a bargaining environment with two-sided asymmetric information and quasilinear preferences in which parties select bargaining mechanism after learning their valuations. I demonstrate that sometimes the buyer achieves a higher ex-ante payoff if the bargaining mechanism is...

Introduction: beyond the boom -- The shale boom in historical perspective -- Local jurisdictions and variation in state law in the Marcellus Shale region -- How the legal framework of fracking in Appalachia disserves the poor -- Framing fracking through local lenses -- Using boomtown models to...