Tax motivated takings are takings by a local government aimed purely at increasing its tax base. Such an action was justified by the Supreme Court's ruling in Kelo v. New London, which allowed the use of eminent domain for a private redevelopment project on the grounds that the project promised...

Criminal procedure concerns the rules regarding the treatment of criminal defendants during the time from their arrest until the determination of a final verdict. From an economic perspective, the goal of this process is to achieve the most accurate determination of guilt at the lowest possible...

Blume, Rubinfeld, and Shapiro (1984) first showed that compensation for takings can lead to a moral hazard problem that results in overinvestment in land suitable for public use. To the contrary, this paper shows that the compensation rule is irrelevant regarding the level of investment...

The ruler's power varied greatly in Islamic history over time and space. We explain these variations with a political economy approach to public finance, identifying factors affecting economic power and its constraints. An influential interest group capable of affecting the ruler's power was the...

The doctrine of fair use allows limited copying of creative works based on the rationale that copyright holders would consent to such uses if bargaining were possible. This paper develops a formal model of fair use in an effort to derive the efficient legal standard for applying the doctrine....

Methods of tax collection employed by modern governments seem dull when compared to the rich variety observed in history. Whereas most governments today typically use salaried agents to collect taxes, various other types of contractual relationships have been observed in history, including...

This paper examines the optimal use of criminal solicitation as a law enforcement strategy. The benefits are greater deterrence of crime (due to the greater likelihood of apprehension), and the savings in social harm as some offenders are diverted away from committing actual crimes through...

State and religion, two of the oldest institutions known to mankind, have historically had a close relationship with each other, often joining forces to rule populations. Although the tendency towards secularization has hampered this relationship in recent centuries, the state-religion alliance...

Greater trial delay is commonly associated with decreasing demand for trials, thereby bringing about an equilibrium for a given trial capacity. This note highlights that – in contrast to this premise – trial delay may in fact increase trial demand. Such an outcome is established for a...

This paper applies Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to voting for the Baseball Hall of Fame. The approach interprets a player's career statistics as inputs, and the percentage of votes he received for the HOF as the output. A constructed frontier based on past voting defines the maximum number of...