Politics is believed to distort decisions in regulated private firms as well as in government enterprises. In order to compare the magnitude of these distortions, I examine one of the very few large U.S. industries where both for-profit and government enterprises sell goods to the public:...

Since the 1970s, U.S. federal courts have issued court orders condemning state prison crowding. However, the impact of these court orders on prison spending and prison conditions is theoretically ambiguous because it is unclear if these court orders are enforceable. We examine states' responses...

Accurate data on crime rates is essential for evaluating many social programs. However, in the United States, officials often impute crime rates to compensatefor the 20--40% of agencies that do not report crime statistics. I show that all commonly used methods underestimate crime. First, I show...

Acquisition systems of property taxation can lead individuals who just bought a home to pay five times more property taxes than neighbors who own comparable homes (Nordlinger v. Hahn). These large inequities seem to violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S....

However, we find that court interventions, that are associated with higher corrections expenditures, lead to lower welfare expenditures. This suggests that the burden of increased correctional spending is borne by the poor. Furthermore, states do not increase welfare spending after their release...

In the last twenty years, state revenues have increased for long stretches and then suffered drastic declines. We seek to determine whether asymmetric responses to these revenue swings lead governments to grow and to change their spending allocations. We find that general government spending and...

A theoretical model relates case mix, staffing, and monitoring to the likelihood of a plea agreement. Analysis of federal drug trafficking cases in fiscal years 1993 through 1996 leads to the following conclusions: There are fewer pleas in districts that are understaffed and are facing more...

This study provides evidence that state budget officials give biased forecasts. Specifically, in gubernatorial election years, state budget officers overestimate the growth in state personal income, U.S. personal income, and state revenues by 1.3%, 1%, and 2%, respectively. These biases are even...