Nationalism has become the most prevalent source of political conflict and violence in the
world. Scholarship has provided scant guidance about the prospects of containing the dark …

The authors of this timely and provocative book use the tools of economic analysis to
examine the formation and change of political borders. They argue that while these issues …

In a world of trade restrictions, large countries enjoy economic benefits, because political
boundaries determine the size of the market. Under free trade and global markets even …

This paper models and empirically investigates underlying forces that promote
governmental decentralization, or effective federalism, in the world over the last 25 years. A …

Normally, economists take the size of countries as an exogenous variable. Nevertheless, the
borders of countries and their size change, partially in response to economic factors such as …

Throughout what publisher Henry Luce dubbed the" American century," the United States
has wrestled with two central questions. Should it pursue its security unilaterally or in …

There are numerous regions where movements for sovereignty or independence are seen
as serious alternatives to the status quo. Quebec, Scotland, Catalonia, and Flanders have …

Extortion of productive enterprises ('shops') by organized crime groups ('gangs') takes place
in virtually all economies. We develop a framework to study this activity. The main harm of …

In this paper we examine compensation schemes that prevent a threat of secession by any
of a country's regions. We prove that, under quite general assumptions on the distribution of …

We examine a stark setting in which security or protection can be provided by self-governing
groups or by for-profit entrepreneurs (kings, kleptocrats, or mafia dons). Although self …