Recent studies in psychology and neuroscience find that fictional works exert strong influence on readers and shape their opinions and worldviews. We study the Potterian economy, which we compare to economic models, to assess how Harry Potter books affect economic literacy. We find that some...

This paper presents a tractable and parsimonious theory of political revolutions in societies devoid of democratic processes. I frame a society constituting a ruler seeking to prevent uprising and a revolutionary leader attempting to induce revolt. Both seek to appeal to a populace consisting of...

In recent years, comparative economics experienced a revival, with a new focus on comparing capitalist economies. The theme of the new research is that institutions exert a profound influence on economic development. The authors argue that, to understand capitalist institutions, one needs to...

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...

This paper reconstructs the economic policy debates in Bulgaria during the Great Depression. The goal is twofold. First, it depicts the development of Bulgarian economic thought in the inter-war period and analyzes its intellectual relationships to the evolution of European (especially...

French Abstract: Dans cet article nous montrons d'abord que, contrairement à un résultat de Sraffa, il est possible - sous certaines conditions - de définir plusieurs marchandises homothétiques sur la base du même système de production originel. Cela nous permet de montrer que le prix...

There are many goals an instructor may wish to accomplish in a course on economic principles. For us the definitive goal is the generation of sensible and active members of a civil society. This is an ambitious goal: it requires that students internalize the economic way of thinking and learn to...