This collection of essays 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 behavior 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.