The article provides an economic interpretation of Kelsen's theory of decentralized governments. It helps to distinguish different forms of federalism and in particular the corresponding conflicts of principalship inside the governmental structure. The model is applied to the early American...

The purpose of this paper is to analyse David Hume's model of man. We show that three major elements characterize his representation of man: first the weaknesses and limitations of human rationality; second, the psychological foundations of human behaviour, with a particular focus on the role of...

Meir Kohn’s Exchange and Value claims that economics can be characterised around two opposed paradigms, the exchange and the value paradigms. In this paper, we apply this dichotomy to characterise the analyses proposed by economists in the field known as “law and economics”. We compare and...

This article proposes to reassess Hayek’s theory of cultural evolution in the light of Darwin’s Descent of Man. It is shown that Hayek and Darwin refers to the same theory of human nature which is borrowed from the founding fathers of political economy, Hume and Smith. Their respective...

The purpose of this article is to discuss Posner's economic analysis of law and to analyse the differences between his economic analysis of law and law and economics. We propose and demonstrate a twofold original argument. First, we show that Posner does not only propose an economic analysis of...

The objective of this paper is to illustrate a potential problem in Samaritan's dilemmas: that Samaritans have a vested interest in encouraging parasitism. In effect, they gain from their altruism. To demonstrate this result, we show that the Nash equilibrium in a Samaritan's dilemma is a Pareto...

Law and the State provides a political economy analysis of the legal functioning of a democratic state, illustrating how it builds on informational and legal constraints. It explains, in an organised and thematic fashion, how competitive information enhances democracy while strategic information...