Peter Leeson

Posts About

• 

  Inside and Outside Perspectives on Legitimacy: An Economic Theory of the Noble Lie

  The impossibility of constructing totally incentive-compatible institutions, whether organizationally or politically, implies the necessity of something like what has traditionally been called a “noble lie”. Specifically, drawing on the theory of cooperation, the paper argues that viable social organization requires a systematic divergence between subjective preferences and the objective fitness . . .
• 

  Liberty As Legitimacy

  Lots of ink has been spilled in political philosophy over whether liberty is valuable as an end in itself, or as a means to some other end. I’d like to suggest that most discussions of political liberty can and should be understood in terms of legitimacy, and without invoking moral . . .