A possible view of the role of an adjudicator is that it is to obtain the information that is needed to apply a well-articulated legal rule. That is, the task of an adjudicator in a case is to gather and verify the information that is called for to employ a legal rule, but that once the required...

Building upon a long tradition in sociology, economists have recently turned their attention to the analysis of social networks. The present paper adds to this emerging literature by proposing a different approach to social-network formation. As in the model of Jackson and Wolinsky (1996),...

Using more than two years of daily interest rate cap price data, this paper provides a systematic documentation of a volatility smile in cap prices. We find that Black (1976) implied volatilities exhibit an asymmetric smile (sometimes called a sneer) with a stronger skew for in-the-money caps...

The paper applies a popular methodology of competing risks to the analysis of the timing and interaction between the Deutsche Mark/U.S. dollar transactions, quotes, and cancellations in the Reuters D2000-2 electronic brokerage system. Consistently with previous stock market studies, the bid-ask...

Volatility models have been playing an important role in economics and finance. Using a multivariate generalized spectral approach, we propose a new class of generally applicable omnibus tests for univariate and multivariate volatility models. Both GARCH models and stochastic volatility models...

Greene (2002, 2004) examines several extensions of the panel stochastic frontier models including what he calls the “true†fixed and random effect stochastic frontier models. In this paper we extend these two models to their semiparametric alternatives where the functional form for...

This paper empirically estimates a murder supply equation for the United States from 1965 to 2001 within a cointegration and error correction framework. Our findings suggest that any support for the deterrence hypothesis is sensitive to the inclusion of variables for the effect of guns and other...

This paper studies the design of law-making 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, defined as the socialwelfare loss that results from the regime's inability to...

We offer a simple general equilibrium model to analyze how economy-wide forces (i.e. shocks to terms of trade, technology and endowments) will affect the intensity of social conflict over the distribution of resources. Examples of conflict activities range from crime to civil war. We show that...

This paper evaluates the return to formal education over the life-cycle and compare it to informal, on the job training. More specifically, we assess the apprenticeship system in Germany by comparing the long run value of education choices and subsequent labor market outcomes for apprentices and...