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The growth of transfers from miniscule to major proportion of the gross national product has resulted in a decreasing productivity, increasing allocation of resources in obtaining and maintaining transfers, as well as increasing the social tension over the legitimacy and allocation of transfers. The authors of this study trace the historical reasons for the rise of transfers, most specifically in the United States.

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Peter J. Hill

Peter J. Hill is the George F. Bennett Professor of Economics at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. He received his B.S., Agricultural Economy, Montana State University, 1964 and his Ph.D., Economics, University of Chicago, 1970. He is the George F. Bennett Professor of Economics at Wheaton College of Wheaton, Illinois, and a Senior Fellow of PERC.

An economic historian by training, Peter J. Hill has challenged many of the traditional theories of how the West was settled. Neither romantic heroes nor dastardly villains were the major playmakers, Hill argues, but rather economics and politics shaped the institutional environment of the American West.

He provides a new framework that considers western history as an episode in the evolution of property rights, and he presents evidence that the development of property rights is an economic activity subject to benefits and costs. His work also shows that the American West was not a place of anarchy and violence, but instead was characterized by local groups forming to solve collective action problems.

Hill's research has led him to ask broader questions and address issues that are too often ignored by economics: "What makes a good society? What sorts of institutional rules lead to a successful social order?"

Answers to some of these questions may derive from what Hill calls the "grand experiment" that is transforming much of Eastern Europe. As a member of a U.S. team of experts, he has worked with the Bulgarian government in its attempts to privatize agricultural lands, and he is frequently invited to give university lectures. He has also consulted on environmental issues and written on the problem of pollution under socialist governments.