"A highly reasonable, lightly fun introduction to thinking like an economist. When economists wrestle with issues such as unemployment, inflation, or pandemics, they do so in an impersonal, detached way: what's the most low-cost way to maximize good and minimize bad? These trade-offs constitute...

Introduction: applying economic reasoning to the law -- Property -- Should body parts be salable? Moore v. the Regents of the University of California (1990) and the market for human tissue -- Can anyone own the sunlight? Fontainebleau Hotel Corp. v. Forty-Five Inc. (1959) and the assignment and...

In 1998, 46 states were involved in a Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) with the tobacco industry. The other four states settled on their own. Our goal is to answer a counter factual question: how would these four states have fared had they been included in the MSA? We use data from Viscusi...

In a two-period differentiated products duopoly model, most-favored-customer (MFC) pricing policies allow firms to commit to prices above the Bertrand prices. It is shown here, however, that unless a restrictive and unappealing assumption is made about demand, there is no equilibrium in which...

We analyze group decision-making in situations in which members discuss the value of a continuous random variable, then take an up-or-down vote based on their assessments of the continuous variable. Applications include jury deliberations and tenure and promotion or partnership votes. We...