1/ For 2.5 centuries, the Spanish Empire ran the most valuable shipping route in the world, Manila —> Acapulco, where ships had a 20% chance of wreckage, 3x-8x the rate of other routes at the time, additionally surprising given the enormous value of the cargo. Why? 2/ Economists now built complete dataset of every galleon voyage, merging logs, archives, typhoon data, silver flows, etc. Ships were overloaded up to 3x-4x legal limits and often sailed late into typhoon season. But why, when all decision-makers had aligned incentives - don't wreck the ship - and a lot of them were on board?