The paper investigates general properties of power indices, measuring the voting power in committees. Concepts of local and global monotonicity of power indices are introduced. Shapley-Shubik, Banzhaf-Coleman, and Holler-Packel indices are analyzed and it is proved that while Shapley-Shubik...

We study the determinants of 19th century mass migration with special attention to the role of institutional factors beside standard economic fundamentals. We find that economic forces associated with income and demographic differentials had a major role in the determination of this historical...

We investigate the origin and evolution of the legal institution of citizenship from a political economy perspective. We compile a new data set on citizenship laws across countries of the world which documents how these institutions have evolved in the postwar period. We show that, despite a...

Legal rules may be general (that is, applicable to a broad range of situations) or specific. Adopting a custom-tailored rule for a specific activity permits the regulator to make efficient use of information about the social costs and benefits of that activity. However, the rule maker typically...

Randomized response methods, which were designed to elicit candid answers to sensitive questions, have not succeeded in eliminating reticence in survey responses. We implement a methodology that effectively stands the randomized response technique on its head, using it to identify reticent...

This paper surveys China's legal system in the economic reform era. We analyze the role of law in the economy, assessing whether China's formal legal system contributed to those expectations of stable and predictable rights of property and contract that are prerequisites for growth. The paper...

We use hedonic price models to estimate the value households are willing to pay to avoidviolent crime in the city of Bogotá. We find that households living in the highestsocioeconomic level (stratum 6) pay up to 7.2% of their house values in order to preventaverage homicide rates from...

We propose an activity-generating theory of regulation. When courts make errors, tort litigation becomes unpredictable and as such imposes risk on firms, thereby discouraging entry, innovation, and other socially desirable activity. When social returns to innovation are higher than private...

The paper addresses the issue of the impact of asymmetric information on risk aversion of litigant parties in a model à la Bebchuk. First we study the case where the plaintif is the informed party, and characterize the equilibrium with and without a pretrial negociation round. Then, we focuse...