Abigail R. Hall

Perfecting Tyranny: Foreign Intervention as Experimentation in State Control

This paper analyzes how foreign interventions can result in a broadening of government powers and a concurrent reduction of citizens’ liberties and freedoms domestically. We develop an analytical framework to examine the effects of coercive foreign interventions on the scope of domestic government activities. Facing limited or altogether absent constraints abroad, coercive foreign interventions serve as a testing ground for domestically-constrained governments to experiment with new technologies and methods of social control over foreign populations. We identify several mechanisms through which these innovations in state-produced social control can boomerang back to the intervening country. We apply the logic of the “boomerang effect” to two episodes in the U.S.: (1) the origins of domestic surveillance, and (2) the rise of SWAT teams and the militarization of domestic police.

Calculating Bandits: Quasi-Corporate Governance and Institutional Selection in Autocracies

This paper applies the logic of economic calculation to the actions of autocrats. We model autocrats as stationary bandits who use profit and loss calculations to select institutions that maximize their extraction rents. We find in many cases autocrats achieve rent maximization through creating and protecting private property rights. This in turn yields high levels of production, with expropriation kept low enough to incentivize continued high production. Importantly, while this leads to increasing quantities of available goods and services over time, it does not lead to true development; i.e. the coordination of consumer demand with producer supply through directing resources to their highest-valued uses. We apply our model to the authoritarian governments of Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, showing how they function as quasi-corporate governance organizations in the business of maximizing appropriable rents.

Institutional Bottlenecks: What Can Be Done?

Institutional bottlenecks refer to path-dependent institutional arrangements which contribute to economic stagnation. In his research, Timur Kuran identifies several historical institutional bottlenecks which contributed to economic decline and underdevelopment of the Middle East. We use Kuran’s research as springboard to ask: what can be done about institutional bottlenecks? To answer this question we draw on the work of F.A. Hayek who emphasized the centrality of institutions for social order and the limits on human reason in constructing a preferable state of affairs. We conclude that focus must be on the meta-rules through which the process of institutional evolution takes place. While we cannot know the specific outcomes of this evolutionary process ex ante, we can establish constraints to guide it. Reforms, therefore, should be focused on removing barriers to discovery instead of on selecting specific predefined end states.

The War on Drugs in Afghanistan: Another Failed Experiment with Interdiction

Following the start of the war on terror in 2001, U.S. policymakers determined that winning the war on drugs in Afghanistan was necessary for winning the war on terror. Yet despite spending

Drones Come Home: Foreign Intervention and the Use of Drones in the United States

8.4 billion on drug interdiction in Afghanistan since 2002, opium production has grown substantially. We examine the failures of the U.S.-led war on drugs in Afghanistan using the tools of economics. By driving the opium economy into the black market, the war on drugs has fostered regime uncertainty, resulted in the violent cartelization of the drug industry, empowered the Taliban insurgency, and contributed to corruption. The U.S. experience in Afghanistan has broader implications for international drug and terrorism policy.

Anarchy, Philanthropy, and the Provision of Public Goods in a Free Society

Abstract This paper analyzes how the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or “drones” in foreign interventions abroad have changed the dynamics of government activities domestically. Facing limited or absent constraints abroad, foreign interventions served as a testing ground for the domestically constrained U.S. government to experiment with drone technologies and other methods of social control over foreign populations. Utilizing the “boomerang effect” framework developed by Coyne and Hall (2014), this paper examines the use of drones abroad and the mechanisms through which the technology has been imported back to the United States. The use of these technologies domestically has substantial implications for the freedom and liberties of U.S. citizens as it lowers the cost of government expanding the scope of its activities.

The Political Economy of Drones

The provision of public goods is often used to justify the state. Since many highly-valued goods such as education, national defense, roads, etc., possess some public characteristics (i.e. non-rivalry and non-excludability), standard theory predicts such goods will be underprovided by private markets. The state is typically seen as the remedy to this problem. In contrast to this typical view, this paper analyzes the private provision of public and quasi-public goods in a free society. In particular, we examine philanthropy as an avenue through which such goods are already produced and may be provided in a society without a central government. We use Buchanan’s (1965) theory of clubs and Leeson’s (2011) discussion of clubs and “constitutional effectiveness” as a springboard to analyze how philanthropic giving and the provision of goods with public qualities under anarchy might work.