In a cross-section of countries, government regulation is strongly negatively correlated with social capital. We … document this correlation, and present a model explaining it. In the model, distrust creates public demand for regulation …, while regulation in turn discourages social capital accumulation, leading to multiple equilibria. A key implication of the …

For political, jurisdictional and technical reasons, environmental regulation of industrial pollution is often … incomplete: regulations apply to only a subset of facilities contributing to a pollution problem. Policymakers are increasingly … regulated producers are less polluting than their unregulated ounterparts, emissions under incomplete regulation can exceed the …

market. Air pollution fell substantially during 1999, the year in which both electricity restructuring and new environmental … regulation took effect. I find that strategic firms reduced their emissions by approximately 20% relative to other firms and … pollution reductions. The remaining third can be attributed to firms exercising market power …

be exacerbated by government policies, particularly those embodying conservative risk assessment practices. Labor market … estimates of the value of statistical life provide a useful reference point for the efficient risk tradeoffs for government … regulation. Guided by restrictive legislative mandates, regulatory policies often strike a quite different balance with an …

accentuating the role of state courts and legislatures in the creation and regulation of nineteenth-century American nonprofit …. Government officials selectively used their power to grant and enforce corporate charters to reward politically favored groups …

addressed through government contacting and regulation without resort to government ownership. The case for private provision …

Property rights are the most fundamental institution in any society. They determine who has decision-making authority … historians have long recognized the importance of secure property rights for economic outcomes. Other political economy …, philosophy, historical, and legal literatures emphasize different, but critical attributes based on how property rights are …