Peter T. Leeson

WTF?! (eBook, ePUB)

An Economic Tour of the Weird

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Step right up! Get your tickets for WTF?! An Economic Tour of the Weird! This rollicking tour through a museum of the world's weirdest practices is guaranteed to make you say, "WTF?!" Did you know that "preowned" wives were sold at auction in nineteenth-century England? That today, in Liberia, accused criminals sometimes drink poison to determine their fate? How about the fact that, for 250 years, Italy criminally prosecuted cockroaches and crickets? Do you wonder why? Then this tour is just for you!

Join WTF?!'s cast of colorful characters as they navigate the museum, led by guide and economist Peter T. Leeson. From one exhibit to the next, you'll overhear Leeson's riotous exchanges with the patrons and learn how to use economic thinking to reveal the hidden sense behind seemingly senseless human behavior-including your own. Leeson shows that far from "irrational" or "accidents of history," humanity's most outlandish rituals are ingenious solutions to pressing problems-developed by clever people, driven by incentives, and tailor-made for their time and place. Can you handle getting schooled by the strange? Better hurry, the tour is about to start!

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 264
• Erscheinungstermin: 17. Oktober 2017
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781503604490
• Artikelnr.: 49946291

Autorenporträt

Peter T. Leeson is the Duncan Black Professor of Economics and Law at George Mason University. He is the author of the award-winning The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates (2009) and Anarchy Unbound: Why Self-Governance Works Better Than You Think (2014). He can be reached via his website peterleeson.com.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
1Your Favorite Acronym
chapter abstract
This chapter introduces the concepts of rational choice theory: incentives,
rules, and constraints. It defines them and explains the connections
between them, drawing on examples from everyday life. These concepts are
identified as the key to finding the sense in seemingly senseless social
practices.
2Burn, Baby, Burn
chapter abstract
This chapter uses the economic way of thinking to understand judicial
ordeals-trials by fire and water-in medieval Europe. It explains how judges
leveraged citizens' superstition through ordeals to find fact in criminal
cases. This enabled judges to accurately determine defendants' guilt or
innocence where "ordinary" evidence was absent.
3FSBO: Like-New, Preowned Wife
chapter abstract
This chapter uses the economic way of thinking to understand the sale of
wives at public auctions in Industrial Revolution England. It explains how
unhappy wives used wife sales to exit marriage where the law effectively
gave husbands the right to their wives' marital status and denied wives
property rights. This enabled spouses to forge Coasean divorce bargains
indirectly when they couldn't do so directly.
4Public Uses for Private Parts
chapter abstract
This chapter uses the economic way of thinking to understand Vlax Gypsy
superstitions: belief in ritual pollution, belief that pollution is
contagious, and belief that non-Gypsies are dangerously polluted. It
explains how Gypsies use these superstitions to support social ostracism as
a means of governing their societies. This enables Gypsies to secure public
order in their communities despite their inability to rely on government or
ostracism alone for this purpose.
5God Damn
chapter abstract
This chapter uses the economic way of thinking to understand monastic
maledictions-divine curses-in tenth- through twelfth-century Francia. It
explains how clerics used maledictions to protect their communities'
property rights against plunder. This enabled clerics to secure their
property rights despite government's absence and their inability to rely on
physical self-help for this purpose.
6Chicken, Please; Hold the Poison
chapter abstract
This chapter uses the economic way of thinking to understand oracles among
the Azande people of Africa. It explains how the Azande leveraged their
superstition through a poisoned-chicken oracle-benge-to peacefully resolve
petty conflicts with their neighbors. This enabled the Azande to address
cooperation-threatening animus that couldn't be addressed through formal
legal institutions.
7Jiminy Cricket's Journey to Hell
chapter abstract
This chapter uses the economic way of thinking to understand the criminal
prosecution of insects and rodents by ecclesiastic courts in Renaissance
France, Italy, and Switzerland. It explains how ecclesiastics used vermin
trials to bolster citizens' waning belief in the validity of ecclesiastics'
supernatural sanctions. This enabled ecclesiastics to improve tithe
compliance where heretics threatened their tithe revenue.
8Fighting Solves Everything
chapter abstract
This chapter uses the economic way of thinking to understand trial by
battle in land disputes in Norman England. It explains how judges used
judicial combats as "violent auctions" to allocate contested property
rights to the litigants who valued them more when judges were unable to
identify those rights' true owners. This enabled judges to efficiently
allocate contested property rights where a high cost of trading land
prevented the Coase theorem from doing so.