On the day of their trial, a substantial number of felony defendants fail to appear. Public police have the primary responsibility for pursuing and rearresting defendants who were released on their own recognizance or on cash or government bail. Defendants who made bail by borrowing from a bond...

We investigate the forces that explain why trial awards differ across the United States. In 23 states judges are elected and in 10 they are elected via partisan elections. Elections have two important effects. First, defendants are often out-of-state nonvoters while plaintiffs are typically...

If private securities class actions alleging fraudulent behavior by officers or directors of a company are meritorious, directors and officers should pay a reputational penalty when they sit on a board of a company whose officers and directors are accused of fraud. I find little evidence of a...

It is generally agreed that boards are endogenously determined institutions that serve both oversight and advisory roles in a firm. While the oversight role of boards has been extensively studied, relatively few studies have examined the advisory role of corporate boards. We examine the...

This study examines the impact of malpractice reforms on physician behavior using a new measure of liability risk and a nationally representative, individual-level data set on physician behavior. We match our liability measure to data on physician behavior from the Physician Practice Costs and...