This collection of essays departs from the conventional economic paradigm wherein individuals or groups choose among various productive activities for mutually beneficial trade. Each essay recognizes that where property rights are not well defined or easily enforced, individuals may forgo productive opportunities and engage in appropriative activities to compete for property, income, rights or privileges. Though the essays differ in their focus, each illustrates the importance of the institutional setting in determining economic activity. The first of the two sets of essays examines the allocation of resources among productive and appropriative activities in an anarchical political environment, without legal or constitutional tradition. Their objective is to understand different facets of the emergence of order and restraint on individual behaviour out of conditions with few or no assumed constraints. The second set focuses on different types of political institutions, illustrating how they shape conflict and economic activity, and how they themselves can be shaped by conflict.

Social scientists and policy makers have long been interested in the causes and consequences of peace and conflict. This handbook brings together contributions from leading scholars who take an economic perspective to study the topic. It includes thirty-three chapters and is divided into five parts: Correlates of Peace and Conflict; Consequences and Costs of Conflict; On the Mechanics of Conflict; Conflict and Peace in Economic Context; and Pathways to Peace. Taken together, they demonstrate not only how the tools of economics can be fruitfully used to advance our understanding of conflict, but how explicitly incorporating conflict into economic analysis can add substantively to our understanding of observed economic phenomena. Some chapters are largely empirical, identifying correlates of war and peace and quantifying many of the costs of conflict. Others are more theoretical, exploring a variety of mechanisms that lead to war or are more conducive to peace.

This collection of essays departs from the conventional economic paradigm wherein individuals or groups choose among various productive activities for mutually beneficial trade. Each essay recognizes that where property rights are not well defined or easily enforced, individuals may forgo productive opportunities and engage in appropriative activities to compete for property, income, rights or privileges. Though the essays differ in their focus, each illustrates the importance of the institutional setting in determining economic activity. The first of the two sets of essays examines the allocation of resources among productive and appropriative activities in an anarchical political environment, without legal or constitutional tradition. Their objective is to understand different facets of the emergence of order and restraint on individual behaviour out of conditions with few or no assumed constraints. The second set focuses on different types of political institutions, illustrating how they shape conflict and economic activity, and how they themselves can be shaped by conflict.