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Peter Leeson: Articles, Commentary, and Publications

Local Knowledge

July 29, 2008

Local Knowledge is the first of three annual reports covering recovery in the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina. This issue focuses on the successes of and challenges faced by the for profit enterprises that are rebuilding the economies and communities of the Gulf Coast.

The Political Economy of FEMA

January 25, 2008

The authors examine how organizational changes within the Department of Homeland Security have impacted how FEMA responds to different types of political pressure.

The Political, Economic, and Social Aspects of Katrina

September 11, 2007

This paper examines the resiliency of community recovery following natural disaster.  We argue that a resilient recovery requires robust economic/financial institutions, political/legal institutions, and social/cultural institutions.  We find that where post-disaster resiliency has been observed, private-sector responses contributing to the health of these institutional arenas are largely responsible.  Where post-disaster fragility and slowness has been observed, public-sector responses contributing to the frailty of these institutional arenas are largely the cause.

Coordination without Command: Stretching the Scope of Spontaneous Order

July 20, 2007

In this working paper, Peter Leeson finds two significant cases in precolonial Africa that suggest a broader scope for spontaneous order than conventional wisdom permits. The first demonstrates the effectiveness of spontaneous order in the face of threats of violent theft. The second shows the effectiveness of spontaneous order in the face of social heterogeneity. 

Race, Politics, and Punishment: Democratic Failure in the New Orleans Mayoral Election

May 15, 2007

This working paper empirically evaluates two competing theories of electoral accountability in the context of New Orleans' 2006 mayoral election.

The Impact of FEMA on U.S. Corruption

January 11, 2007

The Impact of FEMA on U.S. Corruption: Implications for Policy by Peter Leeson and Russell Sobel examines the effect that federal government disaster relief payments have on local corruption. Using econometric analysis Leeson and Sobel explain how federal disaster aid acts as a resource windfall and why states that have more natural disasters see higher levels of public corruption. They explain how public corruption has negative effects on communities’ long-term prosperity and describe how policy makers can craft disaster response policies to minimize these negative unintended consequences.

The Use of Knowledge in Natural Disaster Relief Management

November 15, 2006

In this working paper, Senior Researchers Russell Sobel and Peter Leeson analyze information asymmetries that appear in top-down efforts at alleviating the effects of natural disasters.

Weathering Corruption

August 23, 2006

In this working paper, Drs. Leeson and Sobel examine whether bad weather be responsible for U.S. corruption. Natural disasters create resource windfalls in the states they strike by triggering federally-provided natural disaster relief. Like windfalls created by the "natural resource curse" and foreign aid, disaster relief windfalls may also increase corruption.

Trading With Bandits

December 1, 2005

In this working paper, Peter Leeson shows that by transforming traveling traders’ incentive from banditry to peaceful trade and reducing producers’ costs associated with interacting with middlemen, market innovations enhanced both parties’ ability to capture the gains from exchange.

How Important is State Enforcement for Trade?

December 1, 2005

This working paper investigates the effect of state contract enforcement on international trade.

Social Distance and Self-Enforcing Exchange

December 1, 2005

This working paper models social distance as endogenous to the choices of individuals. The author 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.

Self-Enforcing Arrangements in African Political Economy

June 1, 2005

This paper was written in honor of the presentation of the Lifetime Achievement Award to Vincent and Elinor Ostrom and was published in the Journal of economic Behavior and Organization

Manipulating the Media

October 18, 2004

This working paper provides a detailed anatomy of state controlled media manipulation by looking at Romania's transitioning economy. This paper examines the specific methods government uses to manipulate the media and considers how media manipulation affects economic performance via the process of policy reform.

Efficient Anarchy

October 18, 2004

This working paper argues that for reasons of efficiency, rational, wealth-maximizing agents may actually choose statelessness over government in some cases.  It was published in the journal Public Choice in 2006.

High Priests and Lowly Philosophers:The Battle for the Soul of Economics

September 7, 2004

False theory combined with bad philosophy generated scientific claims that must now be rejected. In this working paper, Boettke, Coyne, and Leeson provide three cases where the scientistic pretensions of economists got the better of them in the 20th century: Keynesian demand management, the practice of cost/benefit analysis by regulators and lawyers, and the debate over market socialism.

How Much Benevolence Is Benevolence Enough?

August 19, 2004

The absence of an effective enforcement mechanism for punishing politicians who cater to special interests gives political agents strong reason to doubt the commitment of their fellow statesmen to the public welfare. This working paper shows that as a result, even when policy makers are partially benevolent to the public, they are still led to cater to special interests and society fares no better than if politicians were strictly self-interested.

Cooperation and Conflict: Evidence on Self Enforcing Arrangements and Heterogeneous Groups

August 19, 2004

This working paper challenges the conventional wiscom that without a system of formal enforcement, heterogeneous groups are unable to peacefully interact for mutual benefit and are prone to eruptions of violent conflict.

Read All About It! Understanding the Role of Media in Economic Development

August 19, 2004

Economic development is a vast topic, both theoretically and historically, and this working paper does not cover all of its nuances ar angles. Nonetheless, it does seek to provide some basic conceptual categories for thinking about the role of media in economic development.

The Plight of Underdeveloped Countries; Institutions and the Direction of Entrepreneurial Activity with Evidence from Romania

August 19, 2004

This working paper points out that the cause of poverty in developing countries is not the absence of entrepreneurial activity, but rather the way in which entrepreneurial activities are channeled

Was Mises Right? Philosophical Progress and the Methodology of Economic Science

April 1, 2004

Many Austrians consider methodology to be the distinguishing characteristic of the school of thought. ‘Austrian methodology,’ especially as laid out in work of Ludwig von Mises, has invited considerable criticism. This working paper, however, explores how Mises’s methodological position has important implications for modern economic research.

Does the Market Self-Correct? Asymmetrical Adjustment and the Structure of Economic Error

April 1, 2004

This working paper explores the idea that in the economic arena both errors of overoptimism and errors of overpessimism are possible in the face of uncertainty, the presence of option value from deferring a decision to exchange causes trader errors to be overpessimistically biased. This is problematic because unlike errors of overoptimism, errors of overpessimism are not ‘automatically’ revealed to the agents who make them.

Who Protects Cyberspace?

March 22, 2004

Although not a pure public good, Internet security has strong public good characteristics. While standard economic theory dictates that such goods must to be provided by government, in this working paper, Coyne and Leeson observe the private provision of Internet security by the market.

Hayek, Arrow, and the Problems of Democratic Decision-Making

September 21, 2003

This working paper explores the views of Hayek and Arrow in relation to the effects of voting on social welfare.

An 'Austrian' Perspective on Public Choice

September 21, 2003

This working paper examines the methodological overlap between the Austrian and Virginia (Public Choice) school's of economics.

Man as Machine: The Plight of 20th Century Economics

September 21, 2003

This working paper analyzes four competing visions in economic thinking that typify the 20th century.

Romania: Lessons from the Investors Roadmap: Implementation Challenges and An Exploratory Assessment of the Major Barriers to Rural Entrepreneurship from a New Institutional Economic Perspective

September 12, 2003

This report synthesize the result of the Mercatus Center investigation aimed at extending the analysis of barriers to investment in Romania from the perspective of the New Institutional Theory.

Liberalism, Socialism and Robust Political Economy

April 24, 2003

This working paper shows that liberalism is uniquely robust when compared to socialism, since the liberal order maintains more of its positive features even under worst-case scenarios.

The New Comparitive Political Economy

April 4, 2003

Progress in the field of comparative political economy is achieved by examining how different legal, political and social institutions shape economic behavior and impact economic performance. In this paper we survey the new learning in comparative political economy and suggest how this learning should redirect our attention in economic development.

Public Choice and Socialism

April 2, 2003

This working paper explores how public choice theory provided the intellectual apparatus needed to pierce the Romantic veil of socialist ideology and lay bear the ugly reality of the political economy of socialism.

Is the Transition to the Market too Important to be Left to the Market?

April 2, 2003

The emerging consensus among economists and others is that the "triple transition"--transforming the economy, the polity, and the national psychology--is too difficult to be left to the market. In contrast to this argument, this working paper contends that it is precisely because the transition is so complicated and so important that market forces must be allowed to play the crucial role in the transition.