The arrival of the digital platform for buying and selling goods is altering the nature of markets by creating enormous economies of scale and enabling firms to reach purchasers far and wide. Further, digital platforms, especially when they are themselves profit-making firms, give rise to new...

The hallmark of a collective action problem is its aggregating multiple individually rational decisions into a collectively irrational outcome. Arms races, “commons tragedies” and “prisoners' dilemmas” are well-known, indeed well-worn examples. What seem to be less widely appreciated are...

Some prices and indices in national or transnational markets take on particular market-wide importance, either because (a) they are associated with ubiquitous inputs to production, (b) they are associated with highly popular asset classes, (c) they tend by convention to be used as benchmarks in...

Much American electoral and policy debate now centers on how best to reignite the nation's economic dynamism and rebuild its competitive strength. Any such undertaking presents an extraordinary challenge, demanding a correspondingly extraordinary institutional response. This Article proposes...

As a new hurricane season opened in June of 2006, it emerged that a number of online gaming sites were offering bettors the opportunity to wager on whether New Orleans might suffer another Katrina calamity. Commentators condemned the announced practice with howls of disgust, labeling it both...

I critique the contemporary doctrine of central bank independence and its implicit correlate, the dogma that central banks can and must engage only in what I call credit modulation without engaging in what I call credit allocation. This thought-complex is wrong-headed as to both premise and...

This Article, transcribed from a symposium talk given by the author, examines two critical junctures at which foundational decisions must be made in three areas of theoretical inquiry - mathematics, law, and economics. The first such juncture is that which the Article labels the "arbitrary...