Why do sovereign states sometimes fail to settle territorial disputes peacefully? Also, why do even peaceful settlements of territorial disputes rarely call for the resulting border to be unfortified? This paper explores a class of answers to these questions that is based on the following...

This paper develops an explanation for historical differences in the ways in which territorial disputes between sovereign states have been resolved. The main innovation in the analysis is to allow for three possible equilibria: • an unfortified border; • a fortified but peaceful border; and...

This paper develops a theoretical model of the inequality in wages and salaries associated with differences in years of schooling (educational inequality, for short). Our model assumes that in the long run individual decisions to become more educated equalize the lifetime earnings of more...

This paper analyzes a general-equilibrium model in which each person can choose to be either a producer or a predator. This model shows how predation breaks the link between the interpersonal distribution of productive resources and the interpersonal distribution of consumption. SpeciÞcally, we...

This paper analyzes a model in which creative activity and the security of intellectual property rights are jointly determined, both depending on the choices made by potentially creative people either to engage in creative activity or to be pirates of the ideas created by others and on the...