This paper uses a similar theoretical approach to that in the modern literature on the propagation of civil wars to assess the causes of the American Revolution. Economic causes are weighed relative to political causes as a contribution to the more than 200-year inconclusive debate among...

We offer an analysis of the American Revolution in which actors are modeled as choosing the sovereign organization that maximizes their net expected benefits. Benefits of secession derive from satisfaction of greed and settlement of grievance. Costs derive from the cost of civil war and lost...

A model is developed explaining many common historical sequences: inter alia, the rise and fall of empires, expansion or contraction in the geographic size of nations, wars of secession, non-contested secessions, and growth of supra-national unions. The basic unit of analysis is a transaction in...