Recent studies have found that two state-level measures of social capital, average levels of civic participation and trust, are associated with improvements in individual health status. In this study we employ these measures, together with the Putnam (2000) index, to examine several key aspects...

How do sudden, large wealth losses affect mental health? Most prior studies of the causal effects of material well-being on health use identification strategies involving income increases; these studies as well as prior research on stock market accumulations may not inform this question if the...

One technique employed by budget-conscious researchers is to pay only some of the subjects for their choices in an experiment. We test the effect of paying some subjects versus paying all subjects in the context of risk preferences, controlling for the difference in stakes induced by paying only...

One technique employed by budget-conscious researchers is to pay only some subjects for their choices in an experiment, or pay smaller stakes to all subjects. We test the effect of paying some subjects versus paying all subjects in the context of risk preferences, controlling for the difference...

In a model of simultaneous voting, Feddersen and Pesendorfer (1998) consider the possibility that jurors vote strategically, rather than sincerely reflecting their individual information. This results in the counterintuitive result that a jury is more likely to convict the innocent under a...

Multiperiod models of criminal enforcement based on the standard economic approach of Becker (1968) generally find that the optimal penalty structure is either flat or declining. We present the first experimental test of a two‐stage theoretical model that predicts decreasing penalty structures...