Antitrust enforcement makes it difficult to test theories of cartel formation because most attempts to form cartels are blocked. However, federal laws allow U.S. produce growers to operate marketing cartels through devices called marketing orders. These cartels use quantity controls and quality...

We examine conditions under which group consumption is likely to involve informal and tacit reciprocity agreements rather than formal contracts and the price system. Our model shows that informal reciprocity agreements are more likely to be used when transaction costs of formal agreements are...

Buchanan's contributions through 1984 are surveyed in six areas: (A) debt, fiscal illusion, and Keynesian criticisms, (B) London School of Economics cost approach, (C) methodological individualism and the economics of politics, (D) welfare price theory, (E) rent-seeking and polity failure, and...

Which strategies generate value in e-commerce environments? In a step towards answering this question, this paper estimates the impacts of several competitive strategies on the values of the well-known Internet retailer Amazon.com and three of its early competitors, BarnesandNoble.com, CDNOW,...

This paper analyzes the impact of vertical integration on investment and other strategies in a dynamic common agency framework. Movie distribution is used as a motivating example. The model matches several facts about movie distribution; distributors avoid head-to-head new hit releases, hits...

From at least 1893 economists have viewed income as an important determinant of government size and the hypothesis that government size increases with income is now enshrined in the literature as Wagner s Law. More recently, however, public choice economists and growth theorists have tended to...

We introduce a racing model with multiple product generations, product innovation, spin-outs, and licensing. Industry conditions and innovation characteristics affect who wins the race and who markets the resulting product. Small firms market their innovations when they pioneer a new generation...