October 25, 2015
Peter Leeson on Witch Trials and Human Sacrifice
Peter Leeson
Senior Fellow, F. A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics
Key materials
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To speak with a scholar or learn more on this topic, visit our contact page.During the 16th century, Europe experienced a wave of witchcraft trials that has captured our imagination, and much scholarly attention, up until the present era. But the “wave” of witchcraft trials was not geographically uniform. Hayek Program Senior Fellow Peter Leeson focuses the lens of rational choice theory to explain the occurrence, duration, and geographic distribution of this seemingly irrational phenomenon. Leeson also explores an even stranger social trend — human sacrifice — using the basic tools of microeconomics.
Read more about this episode at www.researchonreligion.org.