We view a contract as a list of outcomes. Ex ante, the parties commit not to consider outcomes not on the list, i. e. , these are “ruled out”. Ex post, they freely bargain over outcomes on the list, i. e. , the contract specifies no mechanism to structure their choice; in this sense outcomes...

This paper discusses some of the attempts economists have made in the last ten years or so to integrate norms into the theory of the firm. The paper argues that (a) although norms are undoubtedly very important both inside and between firms, incorporating them into the theory has been very...

This paper discusses how economists’ views of firms’ financial structure decisions have evolved from treating firms’ profitability as given; to acknowledging that managerial actions affect profitability; to recognizing that firm value depends on the allocation of decision or control...

Atlanta's rail rapid transit system (MARTA), which began operations in 1979 and has cost U.S. taxpayers and residents of the Atlanta metropolitan area more than $3.5 billion (1990s), has been identified by advocates of new rail systems in other U.S. cities as one of the most successful rail...

This paper solves numerically the intertemporal consumption and portfolio choice problem of an infinitely-lived investor who faces a time-varying equity premium.

Optimal growth theory is sometices used to motivate green accounting by interpreting the "linearized" Hamiltonian at the present time as a proxy for an inclusive measure of NPP. A linearized Hamiltonian, is, in effect, an affine transformation of the utility function that makes consumption be...

Empirical work relating trade liberalization and income distribution has identified an important anomaly. The Stolper-Samuelson theorem predicts that trade liberalization will shift income toward a country's abundant factor. For developing countries, this suggests liberalization will principally...

This paper contains the first results from a monster study of more than 1.8 million Taxas elementary school students. The principal focus of the larger study is the impact, if any, of growing minority access to suburban schools on the performance of minority students on standardized achievement...