This paper examines 77,236 federal offenders sentenced under the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 and concludes the following. First, after controlling for extensive criminological, demographic, and socioeconomic variables, I found that blacks, males, and offenders with low levels of education and...

Insurance fraud, which adds an estimated $85 billion per year to the total insurance bill in the United States, is an extremely serious problem for consumers, regulators, and insurance companies. This paper analyzes the effects of state legislation and market conditions on automobile insurance...

This paper uses state-level data from 1984-96 to examine how right-to-carry laws and waiting periods affect the felonious deaths of police. Some people oppose concealed weapons carry laws because they believe these laws jeopardize law enforcement officials, who risk their lives to protect the...

During the last couple of decades, courts have intervened in employment relationships by allowing employees to circumvent the workers' compensation liability restrictions. Recent papers point to firms' divesting themselves of operations whose employees handled dangerous substances as a way of...

This paper shows that allowing wealthy individuals to influence the outcome of their trials through the purchase of legal services can be consistent with the optimal penalty literature. Using this analysis, the author reviews some of the advantages and disadvantages of varying the length of jail...

This paper shows that most of the large recent increases in campaign spending for federal and state offices can be explained by higher government spending. This result holds for both federal and state legislative campaigns and gubernatorial races and across many different specifications. The...

Despite all the work on how campaign donations influence a politician's behavior, the nagging question of whether contributions alter how the politician votes or whether these contributions constitute support for like-minded individuals remains unresolved. By combining the campaign contributions...