Considerable recent interest has been shown in a new set of stock-market indices that are weighted by fundamental factors such as sales, earnings, dividends or book values, rather than by capitalization. In this paper, we analyze the performance of Fundamental Indexing™ (“FI”). First, we...

Some workers bargain with prospective employers before accepting a job. Others could bargain, but find it undesirable, because their right to bargain has induced a sufficiently favorable offer, which they accept. Yet others perceive that they cannot bargain over pay; they regard the posted wage...

Multiple studies find that plaintiffs who lose at trial and subsequently appeal are less successful on appeal than are losing defendants who appeal. The studies attribute this to a perception by appellate judges that trial courts are biased in favor of plaintiffs. However, at least two...

Patents are monopolies granted to inventors in order to promote innovation, but they have a limited term because they also impose social costs. There is little empirical research on what constitutes an optimal patent term, or whether patent term should vary across industry categories. We take a...

The wave of corporate downsizing in the 1990s focused attention on the role of long-term employment relationships in the United States. Given 1) the importance that these relationships have played historically, 2) the general view that long-term jobs are “good jobs,” and 3) the suspicion...

The slow diffusion of new technology in the agricultural sector of developing countries has long puzzled development economists. While most of the current empirical research on technology adoption focuses on credit constraints and learning spillovers, this paper examines the role of individual...

Recent work suggests that consumers respond differently to taxes that are included in a good’s posted price and taxes that are added upon checking out at the register. This paper investigates how the government’s choice between these posted and register taxes affects the distribution of a...