Concerns with coercion and irrational decision-making underlie many of the arguments against compensated organ donation. Nonetheless, healthy adults are allowed, and even encouraged, to donate a kidney, without compensation, to patients in dire need of a functional organ. How does the...

First, we address the claim that state auto franchise laws are protectionist and thus serve primarily private rather than public interests by comparing the evidence presented to support this view to the theoretical predictions from economic theory and what we know about car markets. We conclude...

While scores of papers have drawn on the basic insights of the early founders of the economic theory of regulation, the ability to cogently present the general form of the theory in a readily accessible graphical format has only recently emerged. While providing a promising approach for...

From the very earliest antitrust cases to the present, courts have struggled with a fundamental conflict involving contracts between buyers and sellers of intermediate goods. Namely, on the one hand, contractual arrangements binding a buyer to a particular seller frequently are necessary to...

The purpose of patent policy is to balance the incentive to invent against the ability of the economy to utilize and incorporate new inventions and innovations. Substandard patents that upset this balance impose deadweight losses and other costs on the economy. In this paper, we examine some of...

In this paper, we examine the effectiveness of government spending on private-sector job growth. Rather than contemplate the average or typical effect of government stimulus on private-sector jobs, we divide the past fifty years of U.S. economic history into low-growth and high-growth periods....

Market definition is an essential ingredient to competitive and regulatory analysis. Yet, there is significant disparity regarding the definition of the relevant geographic market for high-capacity circuits, commonly referred to as Special Access services. Given the present debate over expanding...

Antitrust policy and mergers provide a steady source of material for economic analysis, both theoretical and empirical. This is no surprise; in few other areas are the problems so obviously economic, so practical, and of such substantial policy significance. Seminal articles in economics such as...

With a sluggish economy, high unemployment, and unprecedented deficit spending, growing the economy and curbing federal spending are top priorities in Washington. A now-popular target for reform is regulation, which even President Obama claims to have "stifled innovation" and to have had "a...

This POLICY PAPER presents an economic model showing how incumbent local exchange carriers may deter efficient facilities-based entry for high capacity loop facilities through the use of quantity-discount contracts for Special Access services. Since efficient entry is deterred, these contracts...