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...

Does the emergence of a stock market require a well-developed legal and/or regulatory system? Although historical work by Neal and Davis [Neal, L., & Davis, L. (2005). The evolution of the rules and regulations of the first emerging markets: The London, New York, and Paris stock exchanges,...

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”...

One of the criticisms of the gold coin standard is it entails more resource costs than other systems. Why after all should people have to carry around bags of gold for each transaction and pay to have so much of it stored in vaults? In this piece I will discuss the options of one famous lover of...

Many economists argue that a pure market economy cannot come about because people will always have incentives to use coercion (Cowen and Sutter, 2005; Holcombe, 2004). We maintain that these economists leave out an important factor in social change. Change can come about by altering incentives or...

Housing affordability has become a major issue in recent years. To address the problem, many cities have adopted a policy known as below-market housing mandates or inclusionary zoning. As commonly practiced in California, below-market housing mandates require developers to sell 10-20 percent of...