A country’s judiciary, police, and security forces are essential to protect the State from external aggression. By virtue of the State’s monopoly of coercion, they maintain a stable legal framework and the safety of persons and property. All these activities enhance a society’s...

If the leader of a bandit gang in an anarchy can hold a territory, he gains from becoming a public-good-providing autocrat. His monopoly over crime gives him an "encompassing" stake in the productivity of his domain that limits his tax-theft and makes him pay for public goods. We prove that a...

Defense economics derives from and is embedded in the multi-dimensional array of issues each country must address when providing for its national security. Applying economic concepts and methods, it attempts to evaluate this great diversity of security related questions, and to understand how...

In a world continuously beset by conflict and violence, the positive study of international security and defense has developed rapidly over the past decade as a cohesive discipline within economics. Part of the cause for this trend is the revolutionary effects of globalization and its new...

We provide an analysis of odds-improving self-protection for when it yields collective benefits to groups, such as alliances of nations, for whom risks of loss are public bads and prevention of loss is a public good. Our analysis of common risk reduction shows how diminishing returns in risk...

We provide an analysis of odds-improving self-protection for when it yields collective benefits to groups, such as alliances of nations, for whom risks of loss are public bads and prevention of loss is a public good. Our analysis of common risk reduction shows how diminishing returns in risk...

This article memorializes the life and professional work of Mancur Lloyd Olson, Jr. The forty-two years of Mancur Olson's scholarly life were devoted to an inspiring pursuit of his vision of "macro." His ideas may occupy the core of macroeconomics fifty or one hundred years from now, or they may...