The Coase theorem emphasizes the role transactions costs play in efficient market outcomes. We document inefficient outcomes, in the presence of a transactions cost, in southern California land markets and the corresponding transition to efficient outcomes after the transactions cost is...

We characterize how public insurance schemes are constrained by hidden financial transactions. When non-exclusive private insurance entails increasing unit transaction costs, public transfers are only partly offset by hidden private transactions, and can influence consumption allocation. We show...

We present a simple framework for analyzing decline in union voice in the Anglo-American world and its replacement by non-union, often direct, forms of worker voice. We argue that it is a decline in the in-flow to unionisation among employers and workers, rather than an increase in the outflow...

We estimate how trade openness affects the relationship between wages, labour productivity and foreign wages using sector-level time series for several EU member states. In some countries wages became less responsive to foreign wages as trade costs declined. We show this counter-intuitive result...

In this paper we adapt the model of MacLeod (2007) to provide one way to formally implement some of Williamson's ideas regarding the effect of transactions costs upon employment relationship. We then explore the empirical implications of this model with a data set that measures job...

Do leader networks promote efficient intergovernmental contracts? We examine a groundbreaking policy in China where subprovincial governments freely traded land conversion quotas, and investigate the role of leader networks on the boundary between jurisdictions that embrace trade versus autarky....

We examine the impact of legislated land ceiling size on capital investment and industrialisation in the Indian states. India's land ceiling legislations of 1960s and 1970s imposed a ceiling on maximum land holdings and redistributed above-ceiling lands. These ceiling legislations, effectively...

In this paper we develop a dynamic structural life-cycle model of labor supply behavior which fully accounts for the effect of income tax and transfers on labor supply incentives. Additionally, the model recognizes the demand side driven rationing risk that might prevent individuals from...

A society is characterized by the common attitudes and behavior of its members. Such behavior reflects purposive decision making by individuals, given the environment they live in. Thus, as technology changes, so might social norms. There were big changes in social norms during the 20th century,...