When bad economics is good politics / Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and Hilton L. Root -- Order, disorder, and economic change: Latin America versus North America / Douglass C. North, William Summerhill, and Barry R. Weingast -- Political institutions, political survival, and policy success / Bruce...

"Little else is required to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things." So wrote Adam Smith a quarter of a millennium ago. Using the...