"Precisely because our ability to impose exogenously the institutional structure that will effectively govern society has proven to be so weak, we must open up our analysis to the evolution of rules from games of conflict to games of cooperation. Instead of designing ideal institutional settings that we can exogenously impose on the system and thus provide the 'correct' institutional environment within which commerce and manufacturing can flourish, we have to examine the endogenous creation of the rules by social participants themselves. The science and art of association is one of self-governance and not necessarily one of constitutional craftsmanship. And herein lies the contribution that contemporary research on anarchism can make to modern political economy." - Peter Boettke
August 2010
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Working Paper — Smith et al.: Anarchy, Groups, and Conflict
“Anarchy, Groups, and Conflict: An Experiment on the Emergence of Protective Associations” by Adam C. Smith, David Skarbek and Bart Wilson. Abstract: In this paper, we investigate the implications of the philosophical considerations presented in Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia, by examining group formation in a laboratory setting where subjects engage in both cooperative and [...]