Economists have long recognized that certainty of contract is essential to a healthy economy. Long-term forward contracts, in particular, help reduce financial risk. Those contracts can only accomplish that goal, however, if parties know the contracts will be enforced. From an economic and...

Apparent ignorance of more than a century of economic history now threatens the competitive constitution of the Internet under the guise of "net neutrality." Net neutrality is a slogan that stands for the proposition that the Internet and physical means of access to it should be available to all...

This paper deals with two related subjects. The first is the past failure of economic analysis to trigger elimination of welfare-reducing public policies affecting the older mass media technologies, such as broadcasting. The second is some speculation about future policy issues that may continue...

The authors assisted the World Bank in conducting an economic evaluation of the effectiveness of legal aid clinics for poor women in Ecuador. The legal aid clinics were a small part of a project to promote legal and judicial reform (LJR) in Ecuador, in turn part of a World Bank initiative to...

The role of the U.S. federal government in regulating economic and social interactions has grown exponentially since the establishment of Madisonian democracy in 1788. This has undermined one of the Founders’ key assumptions—that the role of the federal government would be small. The...

Some Internet service providers (ISPs) and portals like Yahoo! and Earthlink are concerned that cable television and telephone companies that now provide residential high-speed Internet access may branch out into the provision of content or enter into exclusive deals for content. Their fear is...

Hearing on "Net Neutrality: Is Antitrust Law More Effective than Regulation in Protecting Consumers and Innovation?" Testimony of Bruce M. Owen before the Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington DC,...