In The Great Reversal, Philippon makes the case that competition in America has weakened during the past two decades. His book contributes to the rapidly developing literature on the macroeconomic consequences of market power. I argue that Philippon fails to convincingly support his hypothesis...

The ability to mobilize large armies for the purposes of national defense and territorial expansion is a key feature of the modern state. Post-revolutionary France was among the first European powers to adopt large-scale conscription to man its army. For its conscription efforts to be effective,...

To be effective, an army must contain the extent of desertion among its ranks. This phenomenon rose to particular prominence in Europe during the 18th and 19th century, with the appearance of the figure of the ‘citizen-soldier' on the battlefield. This paper offers the first theoretical...

Many economists have analyzed the efficiency of a volunteered army relative to a conscripted army. However, they have rarely studied the working of real-world alternative, market-based, military institutions where military obligations are traded among the citizens. This paper fills this gap by...

Between 1794 and 1796, France experienced an unprecedented hyperinflation fueled by an explosion of paper money called the assignat. In September 1795, the French adopted the Constitution of Year III, which we use to demonstrate how changes in the "rules of the game" and in the "political...

This paper contrasts different interpretations of the creation of the Bank of France. I argue that the Bank of France was the product of rent-seeking behavior rather than the pursuit of public interest, as is commonly supposed. I explain how the changing institutional constraints faced by both...