This article provides a general theory explaining the geographic and population size and wealth of nations. Successful countries create conditions for high productivity in the economic sphere by enforcing property rights and providing social overhead capital and at the same time minimize...

Voters value valence characteristics such as honesty and competence. In this paper, we consider the situation where candidates may have more than one valence characteristic of importance to the voters. At the same time we introduce a new concept “the median-crossing property" which differs...

The optimal organization of the family requires that relations are structured so that non-cooperative game playing is minimized and transaction costs are reduced. I show that therapeutic advice for behavior within the family is to create a functioning property rights system. Punishment is shown...

There is a long-standing difference amongst public economists between those who think that collective choice must be formally acknowledged, and those who derive their policy recommendations from a social planning framework in which politics plays no role. The purpose of this book is to...

In final-offer arbitration the two parties to a dispute submit final offers to an arbitrator. The arbitrator then chooses as the binding solution that offer which is closest to his own view of the appropriate outcome. Because the disputants are imperfectly informed about the arbitrator's...