I use three separate data sets and designs to determine whether sex offender registries are effective. First, I use state-level panel data to determine whether sex offender registries and public access to them decrease the rate of rape and other sexual abuse. Second, I use a data set that...

Decisions about public goods in the real world are frequently made by trustees—individuals responsible for managing pools of contributed funds—rather than by the contributors themselves. We conduct a laboratory experiment to compare contributions made by trustees who play with other trustees...

Immigration control-related audits and their resulting sanctions are not solely determined by impartial enforcement of laws and regulations. They are also determined by the incentives faced by vote-maximizing congressmen, agents acting on their behalf, and workers likely to compete with...

Speeding tickets are determined not only by the speed of the offender, but also by incentives faced by police officers and their vote-maximizing principals. We hypothesize that police officers issue fines more frequently when drivers have a higher opportunity cost of contesting a ticket, and...

This paper presents an agent-based model of urban crime, mortality, and exogenous population shocks. Agent decision making is built around a career maximization function, with life expectancy as the key independent variable. Individual rationality is bounded by locally held information, creating...

Traffic accidents are one of the leading causes of injury and death in the U.S. The role of traffic law enforcement in the reduction of accidents has been studied by relatively few papers and with mixed results that may be due to a simultaneity problem. Traffic law enforcement may reduce...

Arguments for and against the existence of an American cultural divide are frequently placed in a religious context. This paper seeks to establish that, all politics aside, the American religious divide is real, that modern religious polarization is not a uniquely American phenomenon, and that...

We present a model in which price dispersion allows the market to remain competitive in the long run amidst increasing returns to scale. The model hinges upon turnover in the productive technology-leading firm, price dispersion resultant of Stigler's logic of rational search, and limited...

There is a counterintuitive gap in the club theory of religion. While it elegantly accounts for the notable success of strict sectarian religious groups in recruiting members and maintaining commitment, it exhibits less satisfactory properties when used to account for groups requiring neither...