Presents methods for designing institutions that direct and coordinate economic activity to achieve specified goals. These methods design informationally efficient mechanisms. The book uses mathematics, but is written so as to make the material accessible to economic theorists, applied...

In the century after the Civil War, an economic revolution improved the American standard of living in ways previously unimaginable. Electric lighting, indoor plumbing, motor vehicles, air travel, and television transformed households and workplaces. But has that era of unprecedented growth come...

Investing—the commitment of resources to achieve a return—affects individuals, families, companies, and nations, and has done so throughout history. Yet until the sixteenth century, investing was a privilege of only the elite classes. The story behind the democratization of investing is...

Insurance today is a global economic colossus and a fixture in the developed countries of the world. Dependant upon a considerable dose of moral exhortation and enlightened appeal, the insurance industry has become a pervasive agent of social and economic control through its delineation of...

Most development models emphasize a growth in the scope of individual choice as the law becomes impartial, relevant to all. An early expression of this conceptualization appeared in the 19th century, when Henry Maine coined his celebrated dictum that progressive societies move from status to...

"An examination of coined money and its significance to rulers, aristocrats and peasants in early medieval EuropeBetween the end of the Roman Empire in the fifth century and the economic transformations of the twelfth, coined money in western Europe was scarce and high in value, difficult for...