We develop a tractable framework with a fully specified dynamic process of demographic and labor decisions over an individual female's life span to determine the timing of childbearing. Fertility affects women's behavior through three channels: its tradeoff with leisure, its interactions with...

Nearly all the empirical literature on tort liability in the healthcare sector focuses on physicians. This paper is among the first to focus on products liability litigation against drug companies. We model and estimate the welfare effects of failure-to-warn suits, the most common type of tort...

This paper examines the incentives for countries to report disease outbreaks such as swine flu, avian flu and SARS to the international community. Even cursory analysis suggests countries have conflicting incentives regarding whether to report an outbreak. Reporting an outbreak may bring medical...

Why do firms take non-profit status? One of the most popular theories in the law and economics literature is that non-profit status is a signal of quality (Hansmann 1980; Glaeser & Shleifer 2001). This paper offers a simple, empirical test of this theory. If non-profit status signals quality, surely...

We develop a model where products liability trials provide information to consumers who are not parties to the litigation. Consumers use this information to take precautions against dangerous products. A critical assumption is that consumers cannot differentiate between firms that have never...