In a highly debated paper, Lott and Mustard (1997) found that allowing citizens to carry concealed handguns reduced crime. Since then, numerous researchers have questioned the validity of the findings. In addition, ongoing work has shown there is an important spatial component to crime. In this...

We use the Stansel (2013) metropolitan area economic freedom index and 25 conditioning variables to analyze the spatial relationships between institutional quality and economic outcomes across 381 U.S. metropolitan areas. Specifically, we allow for spatial dependence in both the dependent and...

Conventional wisdom suggests that small businesses are innovative engines of Schumpetarian growth. However, as small businesses, they are likely to face credit rationing in financial markets. If true then policies that promote lending to small businesses may yield substantial economy-wide...

Fifty years on we examine two key propositions in Neale's (1964) "Peculiar Economics": the need for competitors in sport to have opponents of similar ability in order to earn large revenues and the effect of frequent changes sports leagues' standings on consumer demand. We develop a consumer...

We examine the relationship between college athletic scholarships and adolescent use of performance enhancing drugs. Annually, 4.5 million male high school athletes compete for about 132,000 athletic scholarships o_ered by NCAA Division I and II universities. Estimates from a probit model of...

Professional sports teams receive large public subsidies for new facility construction. Empirical research suggests that these subsidies cannot be justified by tangible or intangible economic benefits. We develop a model of bargaining between local governments and teams over subsidies that...

Public subsidization of professional sports facilities has been prevalent for the past 40 years in the United States. These subsidies are allegedly justified by economic benefits owing from sports facilities, including the creation of new jobs, new tax revenues and higher income. Recent research...

Organizing employees into teams increases productivity but also generates incentives to shirk. Recent research suggests that peer enforcement plays an important role in deterring shirking in teams. We analyze 10 years of performance and compensation data for NFL offensive linemen, a high-skill,...

"Physical inactivity is considered a major public health problem. We analyze participation in physical activity using data from a nationally representative sample of individuals in 1998 and 2000 augmented with additional state-level data on government spending on parks and recreation. We find...