James Scott has written a detailed ethnography on the lives of the peoples of upland Southeast Asia who choose to escape oppressive government by living at the edge of their civilization. To the political economist the fascinating story told by Scott provides useful narratives in need of...

On regular issues of policy reform—presupposing a stable integrated polity— Hume, Smith, and Burke were liberal in the original political meaning of “liberal.” Thus, on policy reform, although they accorded the status quo a certain presumption (as any reasonable person must), the more...

This paper analyzes the concept of municipal bankruptcy in a comparative framework with commercial bankruptcy. Cities are corporate bodies that continue to exist despite the ever changing identities of the residents. The common designation of cities as municipal corporations suggests an affinity...

The Black Death killed about 40% of Europe's population between 1347-1352. Historical studies suggest that this mortality shock played a major role in shifting Europe onto a path to sustained economic growth. Using a novel dataset that provides information on spatial variation in plague...

The Black Death killed 40% of Europe's population between 1347-1352, making it one of the largest shocks in the history of mankind. Despite its historical importance, little is known about its spatial effects and the effects of pandemics more generally. Using a novel dataset that provides...

Did late Imperial Russia suffer from Malthusian pressures? In this paper, we use quarterly demographic and economic data from Moscow to answer this question using a VAR approach. In doing so, we provide the first application of this common methodology in economic history to pre-1913 Russia. We...

The Black Death was the largest demographic shock in European history. We review the evidence for the origins, spread, and mortality of the disease. We document that it was a plausibly exogenous shock to the European economy and trace out its aggregate and local impacts in both the short-run and...

This paper explores the institutional determinants of persecution by studying the intensity of the Black Death pogroms in the Holy Roman Empire. Political fragmentation exacerbated rent-seeking in the Holy Roman Empire. We argue that this fragmentation led to Jewish communities facing more...

This paper is written for a Liberty Fund conference on 'Liberty in relation to law and macroeconomics'. The paper works with recognition that the models we use are not neutral devices to see more clearly into reality because they also shade that reality in different ways. For instance, a model...

Economists necessarily use models in thinking about their material because there is no alternative given the complexity of the material we face. But through what kinds of models might we use to theorize about the problem of governance? There is a choice between theoretical frameworks in this...