The paper reconsiders the nature of mining districts and property rights during the California gold rush. According to a widely accepted view advanced by Umbeck (1977, 1981), in the absence of effective legal authority, district codes established secure property rights in mining claims. Drawing...

Using data from the turn-of-the-century whiskey industry, we conduct tests of the NEIO methodology similar to those conducted by Genesove and Mullin (1998). Like Genesove and Mullin, we find that the NEIO methodology appears to perform reasonably well for low levels of market power. Conduct is...

Consumers choosing flat-rate contracts tend to have insufficient usage to warrant the cost, particularly for new products. We propose and estimate a Bayesian learning model of tariff and usage choice that explains this "flat-rate bias'' without relying on behavioral misjudgments or...