The goal of this paper is to identify key issues concerning the nature of competition in health care markets and its impacts on quality and social welfare and to identify pertinent findings from the theoretical and empirical literature on this topic. The theoretical literature in economics on...

The eminent domain clause of the U.S. Constitution concerns the limits of the government's right to take private property for public use. The economic literature on this issue has examined (1) the proper scope of this power as embodied by the "public use" requirement, (2) the appropriate...

We review the burgeoning literature on the employment effects of minimum wages – in the United States and in other countries – that was spurred by the new minimum wage research beginning in the early 1990s. Our review indicates that there is a wide range of existing estimates and,...

The fundamental question addressed by this paper is whether or not and the extent to which imposing tort liability on potential injurers improves the public's health. Conceptually, imposing the threat of litigation on potential injurers gives them an incentive to exercise more care than they...

This paper examines sources of gender pay disparity and the factors that contribute to this pay gap. Many researchers question the role of discrimination and instead attribute the residual pay gap to gender differences in preferences. The main issue considered in this paper is whether gender...

This paper starts with a review the economics of criminal behavior. Then, the authors discuss the theory of public enforcement. The economic analysis of criminal behavior and criminal law has been a hugely successful enterprise. As an academic enterprise, it has achieved the goal of...

Considerable evidence suggests that many people for whom insurance is worth purchasing do not have coverage and others who appear not to need financial protection against certain events actually have purchased coverage. There are certain types of events for which one might expect to see...

This paper distills and organizes facts about cartels from about 20 European Commission decisions over 2000–2004. It describes the properties of a collusive outcome in terms of the setting of price and a market allocation, monitoring of agreements with respect to price but more importantly...

The purpose of the survey is to summarize, discuss, and interpret published research concerning the risk aversion of decision makers who maximize expected utility. In doing this, two points are emphasized. First, any measure of risk aversion is specific to the particular outcome variable over...

I survey key developments in applied and theoretical research on poverty rates and poverty gaps over the past two decades, and provide a detailed analysis of poverty trends across a variety of income measures and poverty indexes. Included is an extensive summary of how poverty thresholds and...