We model the symbiotic relationship between criminals and a partnership of protection providers - the Firm. In the absence of state authority, insecurity and crime generate a demand for protection. When the protection providers themselves are recruited among criminals, the prospect of graduating...

A Hobbesian society is modeled to study how the market emerges from violence. From a Cournot military contest for wealth, primitive markets emerge when Rousseau's Garden of Eden or an arms race is the equilibrium rather than war. Politically-dominated (e.g., socialist) or Smithian markets with a...

The current paper connects anxiety about disease contamination to that about cultural contamination and the exclusionary behavior toward ethnic outgroups that it incites. We suggest that when individuals are exposed to disease fears, an epistemic groundwork is laid for construing outgroups as...

I study the causal effect of violence against social leaders on coca cultivation and land restitution requests in the Colombian context from 2012 to 2018. Using the timing of unexpected killings of social leaders in an event study approach, I provide evidence that the start of the violence...

Many states in Latin America, Africa and Asia lack the monopoly of violence, identified by Max Weber as the foundation of the state, and thus the capacity to govern effectively. In this paper we develop a new perspective on the establishment of the monopoly of violence and the formation of the...

States, in their conflicts with militant groups embedded in civilian populations, often resort to policies of collective punishment to erode civilian support for the militants. We attempt to evaluate the efficacy of such policies in the context of the Gaza Strip, where Israel's blockade and...