In an economy with imperfect labor contracts, differences in the distribution of human capital are an independent source of comparative advantage. I study a world economy with two sectors, one where output is produced by teams and another where individuals can work alone. When worker’...

This paper evaluates the impact of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines on inter-judge sentencing disparity, which is defined as the differences in average nominal prison sentence lengths for comparable caseloads assigned to different judges. This disparity is measured as the dispersion of a random...

We study a model in which two perfectly informed experts offer advice to a decision maker whose actions affect the welfare of all. Experts are biased and thus may wish to pull the decision maker in different directions and to different degrees. When the decision maker consults only a single...

Interest in economic mobility stems largely from its perceived role as an equalizer of opportunities, though not necessarily of outcomes. In this paper we show that this view leads very naturally to a methodology for the measurement of social mobility which has strong parallels with the theory...

Endorsements are a simple language for communication between well informed interest-group leaders and lesser informed group members. The members, who share some policy concerns, may not fully understand where their interests lie on certain issues. If their leaders cannot fully explain the...

An argument often heard in favor of trade agreements is that they provide a way for a government to credibly distance itself from the domestic special interest groups who lobby for protection; the idea is that, by committing to free trade, a government may be able to foreclse political pressures...