Single-firm event studies play an important role in both scholarship and litigation despite the general invalidity of standard inference. We use a broad cross-section of 2000--2007 CRSP data and find that the standard approach performs poorly in terms of both Type I and Type II error rates. We...

This article discusses data available for researchers interested in the U.S. civil justice system and illustrates the uses of the various datasets with some interesting findings. Our focus is on torts, defined as an injury to person or property that is not covered by contract and for which civil...

Judges facing exogenous constraints on their pecuniary income have an incentive to reduce their workload to increase their private welfare. In the face of an increase in caseload, this incentive will induce judges to attempt to terminate some cases more rapidly. In class action cases, failing to...

Product liability law reduces the costs of accidents to consumers, thus reducing their incentives to invest in safety. We estimate the impact of tort liability on a subset of consumers who have significant control over the probability of an accident: the consumers of general aviation aircraft....

Many states have passed laws mandating insurance companies to provide or offer some form of mental health benefits. These laws presumably lower the price of obtaining mental health services for many adults, and as a result, might improve health outcomes. This paper analyzes the effectiveness of...

Many states in the US have passed laws mandating insurance companies to provide or offer some form of mental health benefits. These laws presumably lower the price of obtaining mental health services for many adults, and as a result, might improve health outcomes. This paper analyzes the...

Previous work on the regulation of termination clauses in franchise contracts has ignored the ability of parties to contract around state law. Using data on two national fast-food restaurants, we find that Washington, D.C.'s termination restriction which did not restrict choice-of-law provisions...