A controversy among economists and others interested in the limits of rational choice analysis, still running after an onset at least two decades ago, concerns whether intelligent people and especially experts, can be subject to cognitive illusions. This note provides a striking illustration...

<DIV>Why do we volunteer time? Why do we contribute money? Why, even, do we vote, if the effect of a single vote is negligible? Rationality-based microeconomic models are hard-pressed to explain such social behavior, but Howard Margolis proposes a solution. He suggests that within each person there...</div>

Recent work on game theory and juries reaches the startling result that making convictions easier (by easing the requirement for unanimity) would make false convictions rarer. Only the guilty would be put at increased risk. The note explains why the result is contingent on a quirk in the...

A voter only alters the outcome of an election if her/his vote is pivotal. A leading innovation of recent years in game theory applied to politics is Austen-Smith and Banks' analysis of pivotal voting, yielding a special form of strategic voting such that rational voters would vote against the...