A fundamental principle of economics with which Adam Smith begins The Wealth of Nations is the division of labor. Some firms, however, have been pursuing a practice called job rotation, which assigns each worker not to a single and specific task but to a set of several tasks among which he or...

The notion that damages should be multiplied by the reciprocal of the probability of punishment has been around since Bentham and is one of the basic lessons of the law and economics literature. However, the simple 'p' multiplier turns out be inapplicable in the civil damages setting. The...

Conventional tort law does not allow exposure victims to seek compensation until they develop symptoms of illness. Because this may bar recovery if the injurer is judgment proof, some have advocated allowing victims to sue at exposure. However, critics charge that such a tort for risk would...

State and religion have historically had an uneasy relationship, at times being close allies, at others harsh adversaries, and at still others largely independent. This paper develops an economic model of this relationship, where the state's objective is to maximize net tax revenue. Religious...

Unfunded mandates are orders imposed by higher level governments on lower-level governments without providing the funds necessary for implementation. We highlight the following trade-off associated with unfunded mandates: on the one hand, no funding creates a risk of over-regulation by the...

This paper adapts the standard economic model of crime to incorporate both deterrence and incapacitation. The results show that adding incapacitation can result in either a longer or a shorter optimal prison term compared to the deterrence-only model.