Online merchants are exposed to serious threats of fraud, which has the potential to cripple electronic commerce. Classical liberals such as Epstein and North believe that markets require prohibitions against fraud and that government can solve the problem. Although the classical-liberal...

This essay reviews the origins and development of the debate over the “efficiency of the common law hypothesis.” The essay begins with the earliest explanation for the observed tendency of the common law as proffered by Richard Posner. It then examines the Rubin-Priest and contemporary...

The common perception is that complicated financial instruments require state sanction to emerge. It is argued that in the absence of state regulation of financial markets, cheating will be common. We argue that the evidence does not support this pessimistic view. In fact, markets are capable of...

There is a tension between libertarians’ optimism about private supply of public goods and skepticism of the viability of voluntary collusion (Cowen 1992, Cowen and Sutter 1999). Playing off this asymmetry, Cowen (1992) advances the novel argument that the “free market in defense services”...