The Evolution of Criminal Law and Police during the Pre-modern Era

Increased standardization was a by-product of technical innovations during the Industrial Revolution. An unfortunate side effect of standardization was enhanced opportunities for theft and embezzlement. Two significant modern institutions radically [...]

The Economics of Scientific Misconduct

This article presents a model of the research and publication process that analyzes why scientists commit fraud and how fraud can be detected and prevented. In the model, authors are asymmetrically informed about the success of their projects and can [...]



Public Utility Ownership in 19th-Century America: The "Aberrant" Case of Water

Unlike other public utilities, most water in the United States is supplied by publicly owned and operated waterworks. The predominance of the public sector in the supply of water was not always the case, however; private firms dominated US water [...]

Aligning Ambition and Incentives

Labor turnover creates longer term career concerns incentives that motivate employees in addition to the short-term monetary incentives provided by the current employer. We analyze how these incentives interact and derive implications for the design [...]

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Dynamic Contract Breach

This article studies the design of optimal liquidated damages when breach of contract is possible at multiple points in time. It offers an intuitive explanation for why cancellation fees for some services (e.g., hotel reservations) increase as the [...]

Product Safety, Buybacks, and the Post-Sale Duty to Warn

A manufacturer learns a product’s risks after it has been sold and distributed to consumers. When held strictly liable for product-related injuries, the manufacturer offers to repurchase the product when the risk exceeds a threshold. Consumers accept [...]

Financing Direct Democracy: Revisiting the Research on Campaign Spending and Citizen Initiatives

The conventional view in the direct democracy literature is that spending against a measure is more effective than spending in favor of a measure, but the empirical results underlying this conclusion have been questioned by recent research. We argue [...]

Ties that Truly Bind: Noncompetition Agreements, Executive Compensation, and Firm Investment

We study the effects of noncompetition agreements by analyzing time-series and cross-sectional variation in the enforceability of these contracts across US states. We find that tougher noncompetition enforcement promotes executive stability. [...]

Even if it is not Bribery: The Case for Campaign Finance Reform

We develop a dynamic multidimensional signaling model of campaign finance in which candidates can signal their ability by enacting policy and/or by raising and spending campaign funds, both of which are costly. Our model departs from the existing [...]