Optimal Jurisdictions and the Economic Theory of the State: Or, Anarchy and One-World Government Are Only Corner Solutions

摘要

As I see it, a genuinely economic theory of the nation state must satisfy at least two criteria: (1) it has to explain why a community of self-seeking individuals is better off with certain forms of decision-making centralized rather than dispersed, and (2) it has to explain what factors determine the optimal jurisdictional area over which this centralized decision-making will take place. At the risk of oversimplification we may say that an economic theory of the state must explain why both anarchism and one-world government are generally non-optimal political arrangements.