In this paper I show that the capacity for a legal regime to generate value-enhancing legal adaptation to local and changing conditions through adjudication depends on its capacity to generate and implement adequate expertise about the environment in which law is applied (shared legal human...

This paper uses variation in victimization probabilities and past victimization between individuals living in the same community to shed new light on the costs of crime. I use panel data from the Mexican Family Life Survey for 2002 and 2005 and look at the impact of within-community differences...

Motivated by the Somali fishermen–pirates, I explore the time allocation decision of potential pirates between piracy and an alternative non-violent occupation, fishing, when the returns of both piracy and fishing are sensitive to patrolling intensity. For a range of parameters, the static...

We argue that perceived fairness of the income generation process affects the association between income inequality and subjective well-being, and that there are systematic differences in this regard between countries that are characterized by a high or, respectively, low level of actual...

The notion of plan coordination enjoys a central place in the analysis of institutions and competitive market processes. The conventional wisdom is that institutions and policies vary in the extent to which they promote competition and how quickly and completely they bring individuals’ plans...

We develop a theory of economic organization grounded in the naturalistic paradigm currently emerging at the intersection of biology and the behavioral and social sciences. The crux of this approach is the recognition that an understanding of the evolutionary origins of human organizational...

Using a common pool resource game protocol with voting we examine experimentally how cooperation varies with the level at which (binding) votes are aggregated. Our results are broadly in line with theoretical predictions. When players can vote on the behavior of the whole group or when leaders...

Institutional economists concerned with rules often focus on the trade-off between individuals and social incentives. This paper argues that the real trade-off that individuals face is between the organizations they belong to in contrast to social rules, and asks when do individuals find it in...

We demonstrate that receiver credulity can be understood through a false consensus effect: the likelihood with which individuals believe messages about the behavior of others can be explained by their own behavioral tendencies in a comparable situation. In a laboratory experiment, subjects play...

The intellectual histories of economics and evolutionary biology are closely intertwined because both subjects deal with living, complex, evolving systems. Because the subject matter is similar, contemporary evolutionary thought has much to offer to economics. In recent decades theoretical...