The secret ballot was designed to eliminate the incentive for candidates to purchase votes through direct vote buying. When voters have private information on their candidate preferences, incumbent candidates will generally be less efficient in purchasing votes than their challengers. Incumbent...

Assuming strict two-party competition, policy balancing models of the US senate imply that senators from the same state will often be from opposite parties and have great ideological divergence. We analyze the effect of independent candidates on these implications. Our theoretical model implies...

We apply the economic theory of crime to the National Hockey League. We analyze a natural experiment in which games during the 1999--2000 season had either one or two referees. We determine the effect of the number of referees on both the number of penalties called and the number of rules...

The authors present a simple diagrammatic exposition of a pollutionpermit market in which both firms that generate pollution and consumers who are harmed by pollution are allowed to purchase permits at a single market price. They show that the market equilibrium is efficient if and only if the...

We analyze a novel method for improving the efficiency of pollution permit markets by optimizing the way in which emissions are exchanged through trade. Under full-information, it is optimal for emissions to exchange according to the ratio of marginal damages. However, under a canonical model...

Compliance links between CO2 emission trading programs--where firms regulated under one region's tradable permit program can comply using permits from another region, and vice-versa--are beginning to arise as a vehicle to lower costs, increase liquidity, and strengthen institutions while...

<title>Abstract</title> The authors present a simple diagrammatic exposition of a pollution-permit market in which both firms that generate pollution and consumers who are harmed by pollution are allowed to purchase permits at a single market price. They show that the market equilibrium is efficient if and...

Links between emission trading programs are not immutable, as highlighted by New Jersey's exit from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. This raises the question of what to do with existing permits that are banked for future use--choices that have consequences for market behavior in advance...