Casino gambling is a social issue, because in addition to the direct benefits to those who own and use casinos, positive and negative externalities are reaped and borne by those who do not gamble. To correctly assess the total economic impact of casinos, one must distinguish between business...

The Commission appointed by Governor Barnes consists of fourteen members, three ex officio members, and seven advisory members. This group includes academics, members of the legislature, claimants attorneys, defense attorneys, representatives from the insurance industry, organized labor, the...

Dan Kahan and Donald Braman’s provocative analysis contends that because people’s beliefs about firearms are primarily formed by cultural values, empirical data are unlikely to have much effect on the gun debate. Their proposed solution to this quandary is that scholars who want to help...

While few economists analyzed criminal behaviour and the criminal justice process before Gary Becker’s seminal 1968 paper, an enormous body of economic research on crime has since been produced. This insightful and comprehensive Handbook reviews and extends much of this important...

Punitive damages are one of the most controversial aspects of tort litigation and have been the subject of various theoretical, empirical, and experimental studies. One criticism of punitive damages refers to the effect that they have on civil litigation processes. In particular, Polinsky (1997)...

This paper examines the effects of Georgia's merit-based HOPE Scholarship on college enrollment. Introduced in 1993, the HOPE Scholarship covers tuition, fees, and book expenses for students attending Georgia public colleges, and provides a subsidy of comparable value to students attending...

Punitive damages are a controversial aspect of tort litigation and have been the subjct of numerous theoretical, empirical, and experimental studies. Critics have argued that the uncertainty and unpredictability that punitive damages claims inject into a case may increase the rate and amount of...

Recently many papers have used the arrest rate to measure punishments in crime-rate regressions. However, arrest rates account for only a portion of the criminal sanction. Conviction rates and time served are theoretically important, but rarely used, and excluding them generates omitted variable...

The labor market prospects of young, unskilled men fell dramatically in the 1980s and improved in the 1990s. Crime rates show a reverse pattern: increasing during the 1980s and falling in the 1990s. Because young, unskilled men commit most crime, this paper seeks to establish a causal...

Introduced in 1993, Georgia's HOPE Program sponsors a merit-based scholarship for students attending in-state colleges and a grant for those entering technical schools. There are no income restrictions. Comparing Georgia with other southeastern states over the 1988–97 period, HOPE increased...