Why do bureaucratic principals appoint agents who hold different policy views from themselves? We posit an explanation based on the interplay between two types of agency costs: shirking on information production and policy bias. Principals employ biased agents because they shirk less. This...

A growing literature exploits credit score cutoff rules as a natural experiment to estimate the moral hazard effect of securitization on lender screening. However, these cutoff rules can be traced to underwriting guidelines for originators, not for securitizers. Moreover, loan-level data reveal...

We show how ownership of the firm by its customers, as well as nonprofit status, can prevent firms from using contractual terms that take advantage of consumer biases. By eliminating an outside residual claimant with control over the firm, these alternatives to investor ownership reduce the...

We model the evolution of international refugee law and analyze reform proposals. We show that the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees can be understood as an agreement among states to supply the global public good of refugee protection but that the increase in economic migration...

This paper investigates the factors that have shaped the evolution of property rights institutions. Using a regression discontinuity design, I show that the divergent state laws of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire have had little effect on de facto property rights institutions. In contrast, the data...

In this article, we evaluate the role of elections in governors' state tax policy making. Does it matter for state taxes whether the governor is a Democrat or Republican and whether she is eligible for re-election or faces a binding term limit? Using a Regression Discontinuity Design and a panel...

We assess the effect of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) laws on public corruption in the United States. Specifically, we investigate the impact of switching from a weak to a strong state-level FOIA law on corruption convictions of state and local government officials. The evidence suggests...

type="main" <p>This article estimates the causal effect of retirement-induced workload spikes on the selection of procurement terms. In a sample of 150,000 contracts from 85 procurement offices over 11 years, increases in workload decrease reliance on competitive acquisition procedures, decrease...</p>