A recent nationwide survey estimated that approximately 20 million households in the United States use wood as a source of heating fuel and that about 30 percent of those use wood as their primary source of space heat.' In two studies of total wood energy consumption, the U.S. Department of...

Consider a group of agents embedded in a network, repeatedly playing a game with their neighbors. Each agent acts locally but through the links of the network local decisions percolate to the entire population. Past research shows that such a system converges either to an absorbing state (a...

A large portion of our economic interactions involves a very small portion of the population. We seem to prefer familiar venues. But the tendency to focus our attention on a few individuals or activities is an attribute that is typically omitted in our characterization of markets. In markets...

Criminals impose costs on society that go beyond the direct losses suffered by their victims; crime casts a shadow of uncertainty over our daily economic and social activities. Consequently, individuals and society as a whole choose to direct resources to crime prevention. In this study we...

Labor PACs are used to explore the potential congressional influence of campaign contributions from special interest groups. PACs of organized labor are particularly useful for two reasons. First, a set of labor issues are defined each year by the AFL-CIO and so ad-hoc decisions about pertinent...