We analyze the changes the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), a widely studied cartel, made in 2002 to the organizational structure of its most valuable asset, the Division I men’s basketball tournament. The NCAA granted itself more freedom in assigning participating teams to...

This paper presents time-series evidence on the voting behavior of members of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1975 to 1990. The empirical results indicate that voting behavior of individual congressmen is remarkably stable over time. The authors find no evidence of economically...

This paper analyzes the relationship between changes in unionization and firm growth. Average growth is significantly low er in manufacturing firms that experience successful union elections bu t these strong "effects" are largely illusory. The authors find no evidence of a significant...

This article examines empirically the hypothesis that incomplete contracts and resulting opportunistic behavior over the return to sunk assets reduces investment. Union-firm contracts are incomplete because they (1) do not prevent all actions aimed at changing the existing contract; (2) cover a...

Self-employment rates and incomes differ significantly by race. The authors show that these differentials arise in markets with consumer discrimination and incomplete information about the price of the good and the race of the seller. Equilibrium income distributions have two properties: mean...

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...

This paper argues that firms use debt to protect the wealth of shareholders from the threat of unionization. Under U.S. labor law, the firm cannot prohibit its workers from attempting to form a collective bargaining unit. Debt policy offers a method of reducing the impact of this monopoly right...

This paper investigates if young internal migrants in the United States experience economic assimilation as they adapt to their new residential location. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, the authors examine how the hourly earnings of interstate migrants are affected by...