We examine whether variation in the separation of ownership and control influences the tax practices of private firms with different ownership structures. Fama and Jensen (1983) assert that when equity ownership and corporate decision-making are concentrated in just a small number of...

While conducting empirical work, researchers sometimes observe changes in outcomes before adoption of a new policy. The conventional diagnosis is that treatment is endogenous. This observation is also consistent, however, with anticipation effects that arise naturally out of many theoretical...

This paper uses 1989–2010 county-level data to reexamine the effect of non-economic damages caps on the field of obstetrics. Previous literature found that caps on damages lead to both changes in the number of physicians and changes in treatment patterns. This paper investigates whether the...

Shavell (1980) established that tort regimes fail to incentivize optimal activity levels. The bearer of residual loss adopts a socially optimal activity level; however, the nonbearer of residual loss will adopt an excessive level. We explore alternative liability rules, which distribute the cost...

Sanctions are often so weak that a money maximizing individual would not be deterred. In this paper I test the hypothesis that imperfect sanctions may nonetheless serve a forward looking purpose if sufficiently many individuals are averse against advantageous inequity. Using a linear public good...

Storm-related service outages in electricity and telecommunications have created public controversies regarding the adequacy of ex ante efforts to prevent outages and ex post efforts to restore power. Product liability rules, used to promote quality of service throughout the economy, might seem...

Negotiation over externalities, as assumed by the ?Coase theorem,? may be impeded by a moral or social ban on exchanging this type of property right. This article shows that the empirical tests of the ?Coase theorem? bring to light three degrees on the spectrum of the moral or social...

This paper explores the interaction of private precaution and public safety investments that are determined in a political process. We distinguish between a scenario in which the median-voter victim influences public safety and one in which the injurer lobbies the public agent, analyzing both...

We explore the sensitivity of the clinical decisions of physicians to the standards of care expected of them under the law, drawing on the abandonment by states over time of rules holding physicians to standards determined by local customs and the contemporaneous adoption of national-standard...

I explore the association between regional variations in physician behavior and the geographical scope of malpractice standards of care. I estimate a 30-50 percent reduction in the gap between state and national utilization rates of various treatments and diagnostic procedures following the...