In this article we derive the mix of criminal sanctions—choosing among prison, parole, and probation—that achieves any target level of deterrence at least cost. We assume that prison has higher disutility and higher cost per unit time than parole and probation and that potential offenders...

The antitrust laws can play an important role in ensuring that the rules established by standard setting organizations are effective in preventing the owners of standard-essential patents from engaging in patent holdup. We explain here that both standard-setting organizations and their members...

This article considers the social desirability of prison work programs in a model in which the function of imprisonment is to deter crime. Two types of prison work programs are studied — voluntary ones and mandatory ones. A voluntary work program is socially beneficial: if prisoners are paid a...

This paper contributes to the debate over the unity in Smith's corpus by emphasizing Smith's pervasive methodological approach based on an assumption of self-interest. Specifically, Smith consistently relies on equilibrium arguments to explain why a given pattern of economic, political, or...

The existing economics literature on international trade agreements focuses on tariff agreements covering trade in goods, and offers an explanation for core features of the GATT. Tariffs play almost no role in services markets, however, and the existing models cannot account for the dramatically...

In the Athenian law-courts, wealthy, educated, and powerful elites fought one another to prevail as leaders and advisors of the masses. Regulated by the masses' ideals of a good society, elite competition pushed Athens toward stability, prosperity and cultural immortality. Or did it? This...

The 2005 report of the National Research Council (NRC) on Firearms and Violence recognized that violent crime was higher in the post-passage period (relative to national crime patterns) for states adopting right-to-carry (RTC) concealed handgun laws, but because of model dependence the panel was...

The theory of insurance is considered here when an insured individual may be able to sue another party for the losses that the insured suffered — and thus when an insured has a potential source of compensation in addition to insurance coverage. Insurance policies reflect this possibility...

Proxy advisory and corporate governance rating firms play an increasingly important role in U.S. public markets. Proxy advisory firms provide voting recommendations to shareholders on proxy proposals and sometimes take an active role persuading management to change governance arrangements....

We examine the interplay between social norms and the enforcement of laws. Agents choose a behavior (e.g., tax evasion, production of low-quality products, corruption, harassing behavior, substance abuse, etc.) and then are randomly matched with another agent. There are complementarities in...