 | Do Markets Need Government?
August 26, 2008
Books
Peter Leeson |
| The long-standing existence of vibrant markets under conditions of real or quasi-statelessness suggests that private ‘rules of the game’ must be possible without government. This chapter examines these rules, how they emerge, and how they are enforced.
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 | The Legal Empowerment of the Poor: Titling and Poverty Alleviation in Post-Apartheid South Africa
June 1, 2008
Journal Articles
Karol Boudreaux |
| Titling programs transfer property titles from the public sector to private individuals and in the process allow them to convert property into capital. This process is a key step on the road towards the legal empowerment of the poor. However, legal empowerment of the poor is about even more than converting property into capital.
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| Gordon Tullock's Critique of Common Law 
July 20, 2007
Working Papers
Todd Zywicki |
| This working article is part of a symposium on the work of Gordon Tullock held in connection with the presentation to Tullock of the "Lifetime Achievement Award" of the Fund for the Study of Spontaneous Orders at the Atlas Research Foundation for his contributions to the study of spontaneous orders and methodological individualism.
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 | War, Wine, and Taxes: The Political Economy of Anglo-French Trade, 1689-1900
July 2, 2007
Books
John Nye |
| In War, Wine, and Taxes, John Nye debunks the myth that Britain was a free-trade nation during and after the industrial revolution, by revealing how the British used tariffs--notably on French wine--as a mercantilist tool to politically weaken France and to respond to pressure from local brewers and others.
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| The Shaky Foundations of Competition Law
June 1, 2007
Journal Articles
Frederic Sautet |
| This paper examines the theoretical basis of competition law with specific references to the New Zealand Commerce Act.
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| Social Distance and Self-Enforcing Exchange - Working Paper
December 1, 2005
Working Papers
Peter Leeson |
| This working paper models social distance as endogenous to the choices of individuals. Peter Leeson shows that where government is absent, large numbers of socially heterogeneous agents can use social distance-reducing signals to capture the gains from widespread trade.
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| How Important is State Enforcement for Trade? - Working Paper
December 1, 2005
Working Papers
Peter Leeson |
| This working paper investigates the effect of state contract enforcement on international trade. Following Rose (2004a), Peter Leeson estimates a gravity model of bilateral trade using panel data that covers 157 countries over the last 50 years. He finds that state enforcement increases trade between nations--but less impressively than its status as essential for flourishing trade suggests.
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| Who's to Protect Cyberspace?
December 1, 2005
Journal Articles
Christopher Coyne, Peter Leeson |
| This paper contends that economic principles have been excluded from the debate about who should provide cyber security.
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| Knowledge, Economics, and Coordination: Understanding Hayek's Legal Theory
January 1, 2005
Journal Articles
Christopher Coyne, Peter Boettke, Scott Beaulier |
| Legal scholars and economists alike have been quite critical of F.A. Hayek’s legal theory. According to Richard Posner, Hayek’s legal theory is “formalist” and serves as a useless guide for legal scholars and judges. Alan Ebenstein claims that Hayek’s arguments in technical economics fail. Therefore, Hayek’s research program in economic science should be abandoned, but his program in social philosophy should be preserved. We argue that these criticisms are misplaced, and we contend that Hayek’s legal theory cannot be separated from his economic theory.
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 | Calculation and Coordination
November 23, 2000
Books
Peter Boettke |
| Calculation and Coordination explores the founding and failure of socialism and the attempts to reform and transform it in the twentieth century, focusing on the Soviet experience. It combines the strengths of the Austrian market-process tradition with the political economy of public choice to provide an analytical framework for theoretical and historical examination of socialist practice and post-socialist political economy. |
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