How should the federal government be organized – and who (i.e., which departments, agencies, bureaus, and commissions) should do what? The issue is not new: President James Madison addressed governmental organization in his 1812 State of the Union Address, and in the last century, it is the...

As Google has moved from providing “ten blue links” to “universal search,” controversy has erupted over whether Google is favoring its own specialized search results over competing specialized results offered by other entities. Google’s competitors have complained about “search...

A random sample of new books for sale on Amazon.com shows more books for sale from the 1880’s than the 1980’s. Why? This paper presents new data on how copyright stifles the reappearance of works. First, a random sample of more than 2000 new books for sale on Amazon.com is analyzed along...

The conventional wisdom, as illustrated for millions of readers in the July 2011 issue of National Geographic, holds that the twentieth century was a disaster for crop diversity. In the popular press, this position is so entrenched that it no longer needs a citation. We conduct a study of all...

Antitrust law has been adopted by 120 jurisdictions worldwide. In more than half of these jurisdictions, the agency charged with enforcing antitrust law also has other responsibilities. The assignment of multiple regulatory tasks can affect the performance of a competition agency in complex and...

Democratic governments are typically concerned with protecting the lives of their own citizens. But decisions made by domestic institutions often affect foreign as well as domestic lives. In such circumstances, domestic institutions must choose how many public resources to devote to protecting...

It is common to think that replacing a judge with a new appointment nearer an ideological extreme will pull outcomes on the court in the ideological direction of the new appointment. This paper argues that this intuition is not always correct, at least for a class of close cases. The model...

Apologies result in better outcomes for wrongdoers in a variety of legal contexts. Previous research, however, has primarily addressed settings in which a clear victim receives the apology. This research examines the influence of apologies on a different kind of legal decision — the decision...

The U.S. Congress established the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program, which mandates a certain volume of biofuel consumption from 2006-2022, in an effort to enhance U.S. energy security, reduce transportation-related GHG emissions, and stimulate rural economic development. In this Paper, we...

In the context of changing demographics, the increasing cost of health care services, and continuing federal budgetary pressures, Medicare has become one of the most controversial federal programs. To facilitate an informed debate about the future of this important public initiative, this...