Should arbitrators adjudicate on the basis of their own investigations, or invite the interested parties to make their cases and decide on the basis of the information so gathered? I call the former the inquisitorial procedure in arbitration and the latter the adversarial procedure. I conduct a...

In a model where biased judges can distort contract enforcement, we uncover positive feedback effects between the use of innovative contracts and legal evolution that improve verifiability and contracting over time. We find, however, that the cost of judicial bias also grows over time because...

We analyse the major economic issues raised by the 1997 Tobacco Resolution and the ensuing proposed legislation that were intended to settle tobacco litigation in the United States. By settling litigation largely in return for tax increases, the Resolution was a superb example of a "win-win"...

This paper studies how patent rights and price regulation affect how fast new drugs are launched in different countries, using newly constructed data on launches of 642 new drugs in 76 countries for the period 1983-2002, and information on the duration and content of patent and price control...

The paper studies a simple voting system that has the potential to increase the power of minorities without sacrificing aggregate efficiency. Storable votes grant each voter a stock of votes to spend as desired over a series of binary decisions. By cumulating votes on issues that it deems most...

This paper proposes a simple scheme designed to elicit and reward intensity of preferences in referenda: voters faced with a number of binary proposals are given one regular vote for each proposal plus an additional number of bonus votes to cast as desired. Decisions are taken according to the...

We study a contracting model with unforeseen contingencies in which the court is an active player. Ex-ante, the contracting parties cannot include the risky unforeseen contingencies in the contract they draw up. Ex-post the court observes whether an unforeseen contingency occurred, and decides...

This Paper studies the design of lawmaking and law enforcement institutions based on the premise that law is inherently incomplete. Under incomplete law, law enforcement by courts may suffer from deterrence failure. As a potential remedy, a regulatory regime is introduced. The major functional...

This paper documents the evolution of the legal independence of the Bank of Israel since its creation in 1954 to present times, provides an international comparison, and assesses the changes in the actual independence of the Bank on a yearly basis following the 1985 stabilization of inflation....

Economists generally assume the existence of sufficient institutions to sustain a market economy and tax the citizens. However, this starting point cannot easily be taken for granted in many states, neither in history nor in the developing world of today. This paper develops a framework where...