The theory of interventionism argues that government interventions are inherently destabilizing, which in turn helps explain the growth of government. I argue that the theory of interventionism is also useful for explaining the process of economic growth. At first, an intervention reduces living...

The inefficiencies of common property fisheries are well-known to economists. To avoid over-exploitation, they propose multiple forms of government solution such as taxes, quotas and the enforcement of property rights regimes designed to avoid over-harvesting. But can efficient arrangements also...

The rise of the "New History of Capitalism" as a subfield of historical studies has magnified differences between economists and historians which started to grow during the 1970s. We describe what is and what is not new about the New History of Capitalism and explain how the different...

The theory of state capacity predicts that states with powerful abilities - as long as they are constrained - can promote economic growth. Many scholars argue that post offices historically approximate state capacity and that they can be used to evaluate the state’s ability to promote...