Peter Leeson

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Peter Leeson

  • Mercatus Center Senior Scholar
  • BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism, George Mason University
  • Senior Fellow at the F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics and Economics

Peter T. Leeson is BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism and Professor of Economics at George Mason University. He is also a Senior Fellow at the F.A. Hayek Program for the Advanced Study of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics and North American Editor of Public Choice. Formerly, Leeson was Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, Visiting Fellow in Political Economy and Government at Harvard University, and F.A. Hayek Fellow at the London School of Economics. According to RePEc, Leeson is among the top young economists in the world. For links to his research, press coverage, and CV visit his website:http://www.PeterLeeson.com.

View PDF of Curriculum Vitae.

Published Research

Government, Clubs, and Constitutions

Peter Leeson | Oct 11, 2011
This paper analyzes “constitutional effectiveness” – the degree to which constitutions can be enforced – in the system of government vs. the system of clubs. Professor Leeson argues that clubs have residual claimants on revenues generated through constitutional compliance, operate in a highly competitive environment, and permit individuals to sort themselves according to their governance needs.

Blame the Weather? Natural Disasters, FEMA, and Corruption in America

Peter Leeson, Russ Sobel | Aug 01, 2011
A key insight of economics is the unintended, often undesirable, consequences of government activity. Although the idea that government policy may create harmful secondary effects is well known, too often when policy makers craft policies designed to promote the public welfare they seem to ignore these effects. An example of this may be government provision of natural disaster relief.

What Aid Can’t Do

Peter Leeson, David Skarbek | Apr 26, 2011
Leeson and Skarbeck respond to Gustav Ranis' main objections to their article previously published in the Cato Journal.

Trial By Battle

Peter Leeson | Mar 01, 2011
For over a century England's judicial system decided land disputes by ordering disputants' legal representatives to bludgeon one another before an arena of spectating citizens. The victor won the property right for his principal. The vanquished lost his cause and, if he were unlucky, his life. People called these combats trials by battle. This paper investigates the law and economics of trial by battle.
More Published Research

Working Papers

Wife Sales

Peter Leeson, Peter J. Boettke, Jayme Lemke | Jun 2011
We argue that wife sales were indirect Coasean divorce bargains that permitted wives to buy the right to exit marriage from their husbands in a legal environment that denied them the property rights required to buy that right directly.

Quasimarket Failure

Peter J. Boettke, Christopher Coyne, Peter Leeson | Mar 2011
The efficiency of “quasimarkets” — decentralized public goods provision subjected to Tiebout competition — is a staple of public choice conventional wisdom.

Polycentrism and Gargantua

Peter J. Boettke, Christopher Coyne, Peter Leeson | Nov 2010
How should governments publicly provide goods and services?

Contra-Whig History of Economic Ideas and the Problem of the Endogenous Past

Peter J. Boettke, Peter Leeson, Christopher Coyne | Oct 2010
This paper provides a critical challenge to the Whig view of economic ideas which hold that good ideas from the past are embodied in the common scientific wisdom.
More Working Papers

Media Clippings

Friday Interview: Pirates as Economic Thinkers

Peter Leeson | Mar 02, 2012
Outlet: Carolina Journal Online

India Should Re-Wrap Economic Reforms

Peter J. Boettke, Christopher Coyne, Peter Leeson | Feb 02, 2012
Outlet: Forbes India

What Can We Do About the Pirates?

Peter Leeson | Mar 04, 2011
Outlet: Forbes

The Economics of Gypsies

Peter Leeson | Jul 27, 2010
Outlet: The New York Times
More Media Clippings

Expert Commentary

Empirics and Psychology: Eight of the World’s Top Young Economists Discuss Where Their Field Is Going

BigThink
By Peter Leeson |
Jul 27, 2012

To get the pulse of a field in flux, I asked eight of the world’s top young economists to identify the biggest unanswered questions in economics and predict what breakthroughs will define it a decade or two hence. The interview features BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism at the Mercatus Center Peter Leeson.

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Peter Leeson