Without meaning to be irreverent, it is fair to say that in the Middle Ages, at the height of its political and economic power, the Roman Catholic Church functioned in part as a powerful and sophisticated corporation. The Church dealt in a "product" many consumers felt they had to have: the salvation of their immortal souls. The Pope served as its CEO, the College of Cardinals as its board of directors, bishoprics and monasteries as its franchises. And while the Church certainly had moral and social goals, this early antecedent to AT&T and General Motors had economic motives and methods as...

What role did economics play in leading the United States into the Civil War in the 1860s, and how did the war affect the economies of the North and the South? Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation uses contemporary economic analyses such as supply and demand, modern market theory, and the economics of politics to interpret events of the Civil War. Simplifying the sometimes complex intricacies of the subject matter, Thornton and Ekelund have penned a nontechnical primer that is jargon-free and accessible. Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation also takes a comprehensive approach to its topic. It...

In this highly readable analysis, the authors use positive-economics principles to show how the supply and demand of monopoly rights from the state (rent seeking) provided first the impetus for European mercantilism and later the reasons for its demise in England and entrenchment in France. The balance-of-trade objective, treated by most historians as a primary motive for mercantilism, is shown instead to be the by-product of self-interested parties' seeking of rents.
In addition to questions of the causes and results of economic regulation, this thoughtful book raises issues in the...