Peter T. Leeson (born July 29, 1979) is an American economist and the Duncan Black Professor of Economics and Law at George Mason University. In 2012 Big Think listed him among "Eight of the World's Top Young Economists". He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Leeson is known for extending rational choice theory into unusual domains, such as to the study of bizarre rituals and superstitions, and to the behavior of Caribbean pirates. As Freakonomics coauthor Steven Levitt put it, “the amazing thing about Pete Leeson is that he takes these crazy topics and through a brilliant mix of meticulous historical research, data gathering, and creative economic thinking he shows that these seemingly nonsensical practices actually make a whole lot of sense… I can’t think of another economist whose work has so consistently blown my mind.” According to the American Institute for Economic Research’s Art Carden, “to the extent that the economics profession has an heir to Gary Becker in the sense of pushing economic analysis as far as we think it will go and then discovering it will go a little farther, it’s Leeson.”
In 2022 Leeson received the Adam Smith Award, previously given to Nobel Laureates Douglass North, James M. Buchanan, Vernon L. Smith, and Elinor Ostrom.
Formerly, he held faculty positions at West Virginia University and the University of Chicago.
Life and education
Leeson began writing about economics as a teenager:In 1997, Mackinac Center for Public Policy President Lawrence W. Reed read an articulate letter to the editor…that scolded a previous writer for poor economic analysis of a public policy issue. Reed contacted the writer, assuming that he was a professor of some sort. In fact, the author was a 17-year-old Dow High School student, Peter Leeson. As an 18-year-old, Leeson was invited by an economics professor at Northwood University to lecture in his course.
Leeson earned a B.A. in economics at Hillsdale College in 2001. He received his Ph.D. in economics at George Mason University in 2005 under the direction of Peter Boettke. In 2003–2004, he was a visiting fellow in political economy and government at Harvard University. In 2005, he was the F.A. Hayek Fellow at the London School of Economics.
Leeson proposed marriage to his now-wife, Ania, in the preface of his book The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates. Ania also appears as one of the characters in his book WTF?! An Economic Tour of the Weird. Leeson has a tattoo of a supply and demand curve on his right biceps and is an avid cigar smoker. He illustrated his book WTF?!
Work
Economics of piracy
Leeson's Invisible Hook argues that Caribbean pirates developed an early form of constitutional democracy and engaged in behaviors such as flying the Jolly Roger because doing so maximized their profit.
In the wake of the Maersk Alabama hijacking, his work on piracy drew substantial media attention. In an article published by National Public Radio, he said that "early 18th century pirates, men like Blackbeard, "Black Bart" Roberts, and "Calico" Jack Rackam, were not only thieves. They were also early experimenters with some of the modern world's most cherished values, such as liberty, democracy, and equality."
Although Leeson is careful to note that he does not praise the criminal actions of pirates, he argues that their self-organization is a useful illustration of how even criminal conduct is based on rational self-interest. In an interview published by The New York Times, Leeson summarized his thesis: The idea of the invisible hook is that pirates, though they're criminals, are still driven by their self-interest. So they were driven to build systems of government and social structures that allowed them to better pursue their criminal ends.... The reason that the criminality is driving these structures is because they can't rely on the state to provide those structures for them. So pirates, more than anyone else, needed to figure out some system of law and order to make it possible for them to remain together long enough to be successful at stealing.
CGP Grey's two-video animated YouTube adaptation of Leeson's Invisible Hook has been viewed more than 10 million times.