This study investigates contracting mechanisms in situations of opportunistic disputes between organizations. We specifically explore the relationships between the formal versus informal nature of opportunism and the formal versus informal nature of contractual governance. We use a unique data...

The use of bribes to co-opt an enemy's forces can be a more effective way to wage war than the conventional use of force: Relative to bombs, bribes can save lives and resources, and preserve civic institutions. This essay evaluates the efficacy and normative desirability of selectively...

This document, first created in 2007 and last updated in 2010, has now been superseded by the technical discussion in my 2010 article, Privatization, Free Riding, and Industry-Expanding Lobbying, in the International Review of Law and Economics and the plain-English discussion in my 2008...

This Article presents a legal and economic framework for analyzing municipal broadband. Economics predicts, and the evidence confirms, that municipal broadband is in almost all scenarios subsidized entry, covering capital costs and losses with tax dollars and other internal transfers....

A common argument against privatization is that private providers will self-interestedly lobby to increase the size of their market. In this Article, I evaluate this argument, using, as a case study, the argument against prison privatization based on the possibility that the private prison...

Since January 1, 2005, the Dutch tax litigation comprises an appeals court. Before 2005, it had but one court of instance. That means that now, after a court of first instance has given its verdict in a tax dispute, an unsatisfied party may appeal to a higher instance, where this was impossible...

This chapter — to be included in Research Handbook on the Economics of Torts (Arlen ed., Kluwer, forthcoming 2012) — assesses economic rationales for punitive damages in light of contemporary empirics and doctrine. The primary economic rationale for supra-compensatory damages is optimal...

The burden of proof is a central feature of adjudication, and analogues exist in many other settings. It constitutes an important but largely unappreciated policy instrument that interacts with the level of enforcement effort and magnitude of sanctions in controlling harmful activity. Models are...

Parties often exchange promises of future performance with one another. Legal systems frame and regulate contracts involving the exchange of bilateral promises of future performance differently from one another. Two conceptual and practical questions often arise in these bilateral situations....