In ‘Perfecting Parliament’ Roger Congleton applies the rational choice framework to explain two attributes of the democratization of the West from the medieval times to the early twentieth century, first the shift of policy making authority from the king to the parliament and second the...

The United States today, according to most studies, is among the least corrupt nations in the world. But America's past was checkered with political scandal and widespread corruption that would not seem unusual compared with the most corrupt developing nation today. We construct a "corruption...

In 1841 and 1842, eight states and the Territory of Florida defaulted on their sovereign debts. Traditional histories of the default crisis have stressed the causal role of the depression that began with the Panic of 1837, unexpected revenue shortfalls from canal and bank investments as a result...

The paper examines the questions of how nonterritorial feudal governments in medieval central Europe emerged and what their tasks were, of how competition between these governments functioned, and of what consequences it had. The analysis leads to three hypotheses: (1) governmental...

The American social welfare system was transformed during the 1930s. Prior to the New Deal public relief was administered almost exclusively by local governments. The administration of local public relief was widely thought to be corrupt. Beginning in 1933, federal, state, and local governments...

Why did states dominate investments in economic development in early America? Between 1787 and 1860, the national government%u2019s $54 million on promoting transportation infrastructure while the states spent $450 million. Using models of legislative choice, we show that Congress could not...