Books
Harald (Baen, 2006). My first novel. The protagonist’s society is loosely based on saga period Iceland. The book is not a defense of libertarian ideology but an attempt to explore ideas, including the advantages and disadvantages of alternative political institutions.
Salamander. My second novel and first real fantasy. It started out as a book about the fantasy equivalent of the central planning fallacy. But no plot survives contact with the characters.
Price Theory: An Intermediate Text (Cincinnati: South-Western, 1986). I assume no previous knowledge in the reader but a considerable willingness to think.
Hidden Order, the Economics of Everyday life (Harper-Collins, 1996) is Price Theory converted from a textbook to a book aimed at the intelligent layman interested in learning economics.
Law’s Order: What Economics Has to Do With Law and Why it Matters (Princeton University Press, 2000). The long version of Chapter 43. Page images with links
A late draft in HTML
Future Imperfect: Technology and Freedom in an Uncertain World (Cambridge University Press, 2008). My discussion of technological revolutions that might happen over the next few decades and their possible consequences.
Articles
‘Comments on Rationing Medical Care: Processes for Defining Adequacy’, and ‘Comments on “Rationing and Publicity”’ in The Price of Health, (Reidel 1986).
‘The Economics of War’, in Blood and Iron: There Will Be War, Jerry Pournelle, ed., (Tom Doherty Assoc 1984).
‘Efficient Institutions for the Private Enforcement of Law’, Journal of Legal Studies, 13 (2), 379-397 (1984). This is an article of mine rebutting an earlier article by Landes and Posner, itself a response to a 1974 article by Becker and Stigler. Landes and Posner claimed to show that a system in which crimes created a claim against the criminal by the victim rather than by the state could not be efficient. I claim to show that it can be. What I described was an anarcho-capitalist enforcement system combined with the present system of courts and laws. Think of it as creeping anarchism. Two more steps and we are there.
‘Gold, Paper, or …: Is There a Better Money?’ Cato Institute Policy Analysis, 1982. This is a longer version of Chapter 46.
‘Laissez-Faire in Population: The Least Bad Solution’. An Occasional Paper of the Population Council, 43 pp. (1972).
‘A Libertarian Perspective on Welfare’, with Geoffrey Brennan, in Income Support, Peter G. Brown, Conrad Johnson, and Paul Vernier, eds. (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981).
‘Many, Few, One—Social Harmony and the Shrunken Choice Set’, American Economic Review, 70, 225-232 (March 1980).
‘A Positive Account of Property Rights’, Social Philosophy and Policy 11 (2), 1-16 (1994).
‘Private Creation and Enforcement of Law—A Historical Case’, Journal of Legal Studies, 8 (2), 399-415 (1979). A longer and more academic version of Chapter 44.
‘Reflections on Optimal Punishment or Should the Rich Pay Higher Fines?’ Research in Law and Economics, 3, 185-205 (1981).
‘Should Medical Care be a Commodity?’ in Rights to Health Care, George J. Agich and Charles E. Begley, eds. (Reidel, 1989).
‘A Theory of the Size and Shape of Nations’, Journal of Political Economy, 85, 59-77 (February 1977). My first economics article and still one of my favorites. I use economic theory to explain the map of Europe from the fall of the Roman empire to the present. Governments are analyzed as firms competing for control over taxbase.
‘What is Fair Compensation for Death or Injury?’ International Review of Law and Economics, 2 (1), 81-93 (1982).
‘A World of Strong Privacy: Promises and Perils of Encryption’, Social Philosophy & Policy 13 (2), 212-228 (1996).