Underground mines are extremely capital intensive, but despite this investment the traditional view has been that they have little useful value after closure. There are, however, potential positive uses of closed mines, in particular the generation of renewable geothermal energy. After closure,...

In the common-law tradition, word-usage in legal documents matters because of the principle of stare decisis, the doctrine that requires judges to read and interpret previous rulings relevant to the case at hand. Yet we understand very little of how legal authorities actually write legal texts....

The regression discontinuity (RD) design is a valuable tool for identifying electoral effects, but this design is only effective when relevant actors do not have precise control over election results. Several recent papers contend that such precise control is possible in large elections,...

Does American political representation work as predicted by theory? On average, political candidates diverge considerably in their ideological positioning, but do they diverge less on issues of particular salience to their local constituents? We combine data on congressional roll call votes,...