Olson is an economics researcher from the sub-field of "institutional economics". "Power and Prosperity" is his last book, published posthumously in the year 2000, by his friends. Most people know this book for the introduction of the catch-terms "roving bandit" and "stationary bandit".

Broadly speaking, Olson was inspired by the question "Why does not prosperity always follow a collapse of bad government?". Olson was born and spent all his life in the U.S.A., but is surprisingly perhaps better known in the former Soviet Union. Possibly because he was one of the few researchers who did not neglect Soviet type regimes when studying autocracies.

Olson is also one of the few liberal economists who do not automatically dismiss state's role in a country's economic development. He created a much less-known term "market-augmenting government", of which he was most proud of. He thus concluded that researching the structures of power is important.

As a part of this research, he examined the "succession crises" in authoritarian states and "government incentives" in democratic ones. As the simplest example, even participating in the elections requires effort on the part of the voter, which most election outcomes do not justify. (Rational ignorance.)