Unlike Stigler's original estimates, our re-estimation of his equations yields results which are consistent with economic theory. However, they raise questions regarding the extent to which the data provide a measure of support for the implications of his theory. Stigler's theoretical...

In Gary Becker’s (1991) theory of bandwagon effects, a portion of market demand is positively sloped. In this, he ignores Harvey Leibenstein’s (1950) hypothesis that market demands for bandwagon goods are everywhere negatively sloped (stemming from scarcity imposed constraints). A...

This paper examines the impact of federal securities statutes (seven major legislative acts and 535 amendments) on the mean and variance of total real U.S. stock market returns. In contrast to previous work, this study controls for the persistence of the variability of stock returns, employs a...

In Gary Becker’s (1991) theory of bandwagon effects, a portion of market demand is positively sloped. In this, he ignores Harvey Leibenstein’s (1950) hypothesis that market demands for bandwagon goods are everywhere negatively sloped (stemming from scarcity imposed constraints). A...

History professors have long portrayed Custer’s stand at the Little Bighorn River in terms of the managerial quirks and personality flaws of the central characters. The discussion in Evan Connell’s (1984) book, Son of the Morning Star, illuminates the Last Stand in terms of economic...

The U.S. Social Security levy is widely used by economists to illustrate the irrelevance of legal tax incidence for economic incidence. However, the levy's magnitude in conjunction with an asymmetry in the U.S. federal income tax code make the levy's legal incidence highly relevant for its...

We provide a new interpretation of one of the "great" but in our view "failed" North-South agreements during the U.S. Constitution's drafting. In 1787, lower South delegates to the Constitutional Convention reputedly settled for a simple-majority congressional vote for commercial regulations in...

Neglecting the redistributive effects of a progressive income tax in an inflation, current literature in macroeconomics and public finance offers two contradictory explanations of consumption-based redistributions to the government during inflation. One explanation, the consumer illusion...