This article performs a cost-benefit analysis to determine socially optimal bail levels for felony defendants. We consider jailing costs, the cost of lost freedom to incarcerated defendants, and the social costs of flight and new crimes committed by released defendants. We estimate the effects...

In this paper, we show that sentencing norms vary widely even across geographically close units. By examining North Carolina's unique judicial rotation system, we show that judges arriving in a new court gradually converge to local sentencing norms. We document factors that facilitate this...

Patent citations often proxy for the value of innovation, and the very need for a proxy demonstrates the difficulty of getting direct measures. We value patents using novel data from non-practicing entities (NPEs) licensing revenues, the largest sample with direct measures analyzed to date. We...