The salvage of historic shipwrecks involves a debate between salvors, who wish to maximize profit, and archaeologists, who wish to preserve historical value. Traditionally, salvage of shipwrecks has been governed by admiralty law, but the Abandoned Shipwreck Act of 1987 transferred title of...

We describe the capture-to-ransom pirate business model, which is proving very successful against merchant shipping, even though the latter enjoys the protection of naval warships. We argue that failure to adequately enforce international law is symptomatic of inherent weaknesses in that law:...

This essay provides and economic analysis of the problem of modern-day maritime piracy. The essay first reviews the current scope of the problem, and then develops an economic of model of piracy that emphasizes the strategic interaction between the efforts of pirates to locate potential targets,...

This paper assesses the economic characteristics of the balance that federal law aims to achieve between the interests of paleontologists and amateur and commercial collectors of fossils on US federal lands. The objective function is taken to be the maximization of the social value of these...