What external control mechanisms are most effective in detecting corporate fraud? To address this question we study in depth all reported cases of corporate fraud in companies with more than 750 million dollars in assets between 1996 and 2004. We find that fraud detection does not rely on one...

Antitrust enforcement in the United States has declined since the 1960s. We investigate the political causes of this decline by looking at who made the crucial decisions and how strong a popular mandate they had to do so. Using a novel framework to understand the determinants of regulatory and...

How did citizens acquire rights protecting their property from the depredations of the government? In this paper, we argue that one important factor strengthening respect for property is how it is distributed. When there is some specificity associated with property, and property is held by those...

When citizens in a poor constrained society are very unequally endowed, they are likely to find it hard to agree on reforms, even though the status quo hurts them collectively. Each citizen group or constituency prefers reforms that expand its opportunities, but in an unequal society, this will...

In this article, I assess conglomerates in Chile have affected product market competition. The analysis starts with a review of the efficiency and rent-seeking for the existence of conglomerates. The prima facie evidence fails to find efficiency reasons for the existence of conglomerates in...