For over a century England's judicial system decided land disputes by ordering disputants' legal representatives to bludgeon one another before an arena of spectating citizens. The victor won the property right for his principal. The vanquished lost his cause and, if he were unlucky, his life....

This paper provides an historical example that appears to illustrate how racial fractionalization reduces school district academic performance. Hall and Leeson (AJES 2010) find a negative relationship between racial fractionalization and school district performance in a sample of Ohio school...

To gain some insight into the broad varieties of internal opportunism that modern firms face and the successful organizational structures they may use to prevent it, this article investigates the economic organization of early 18th-century Caribbean pirates

In the late 1720s Caribbean piracy was brought to a screeching halt. An enhanced British naval presence was partly responsible for this. But most important in bringing pirates to their end was a series of early 18th-century legal changes that made it possible to effectively prosecute them. This...