Firms spend operating costs to mitigate the risk of data breach events. However, firms may not know how much to spend to prevent data breach events with varying incidence frequencies. I present a model that estimates the relationship of breach prevention spending to breach incidence rates for...

Self-governance of common pool resources is presumed to work well in small, homogeneous communities where interaction is repeated, agents have low discount rates, and information about past performance is available. It is presumed to work poorly elsewhere. This paper provides a case study of...

This paper uses economic reasoning to analyze the traditions and institutions of one of the most successful criminal organizations in modern history: La Cosa Nostra (LCN). Drawing on recently declassified FBI reports, the paper's analysis shows that LCN's core institutions are best understood as...

The policing of “information” is the stuff of Naziism, Stalinism, Maoism, and similar anti-liberal regimes. To repress criticism of their dicta and diktats, anti-liberals label criticism “misinformation” or “disinformation.” Those labels are instruments to crush dissent. This paper...

The growth of the 17th century French state contributed to the establishment to a more regular, and even liberal legal order. Higher fiscal demands on the state led to a process of legal standardization that extended the rule of law. We use data on witch trials and taxation covering twenty-one...

In bringing economic analysis to bear on the settlement of legal disputes, it is commonly presumed that the parties to the dispute are governed by the principles of private property and so are residual claimants to their legal expenses. This institutional framework promotes a substantive...

Is "rule of law" anything more than a fictional allusion? After all, "law" is an abstract noun, and abstract nouns can't rule. Only people can rule. Rule of law is a fiction, one that has been around since ancient times. Whether, or under what circumstances, rule of law might be an ideal type...

The idea of an identifiable school of thought denoted as Virginia political economy was in play at least as early as 1963, and it is reasonable to conclude that this identifier began to take shape some years earlier. It is common though not universal to identify a school of thought...

Entrepreneurship is the economic source of change in society. While it is ubiquitous, its particular qualities depend on the system of political economy in which it operates. We distinguish between two systems of democratic political economy. One system is the classically liberal system where...

This essay is written for a Festschrift to commemorate Jürgen Backhaus's contribution to law and economics in recognition of his long service as Editor of the European Journal of Law and Economics. Scholars of law and economics have long been intrigued by the possibility that legal processes...