This paper examines mandatory occupational licensure in several professions from barbers, cosmetologists, radiologic technicians, CPAs, mid-level healthcare providers, and physicians. Mandatory licensure is cited as a mechanism for serving the public interest by assuring professionals possess...

Does fiscal governance affect government borrowing costs? We operationalize fiscal governance as the ability of governments to pass a budget on time and, using a unique data set on budget enactment dates, analyze the effect of such late budgets on government bond yield spreads. Based on a sample...

I study the properties of optimal long-term contracts in an environment in which the agent's type evolves stochastically over time. The model stylizes a buyer-seller relationship but the results apply quite naturally to many contractual situations including regulation and optimal...

In many market-design applications, a new mechanism is introduced to reform an existing institution. Compared to the design of a mechanism in isolation, the presence of a status-quo system introduces both challenges and opportunities for the designer. We study this problem in the context of...

This article reveals, by studying correlative relationships between US regime support and regime properties, that the US foreign policy in the Middle East has traditionally helped governments to limit the political participation of Islamists, communists, enemies of Israel and populations that...

The following paper investigates the aptitudes towards the US in Ecuador, a country critical to resolving the Colombian conflict, to fighting the drug trade, and to understanding how development aid can be best distributed. By incorporating an ad hoc database of Ecuadorians' perceptions towards...

In previous work with Mark Lemley I have discussed the critical role played by the courts in fitting patent law to the ongoing needs of innovation. Careful scrutiny of the recently enacted America Invents Act (AIA), which legislatively reforms American patent law, underscores the need for robust...

Obesity is a rising epidemic. This research study shows that the scale of such a phenomenon is due to the effects of peers on individual weight-related behaviour, as well as to the limits on dynamic behavior imposed by habits. We estimate a dynamic linear-in-means model to analyse the importance...

This paper analyzes whether money influences election outcomes. Using a new and more comprehensive dataset built from government sources, the paper begins by showing that the relations between money and major party votes in all elections for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives from 1980...