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...

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 article examines the impact of unemployment insurance on the allocation of labor across industries. An overlooked aspect of unemployment insurance is the effect of imperfect experience rating on hiring. Firms in more stable industries generally pay more into the unemployment insurance...

A market composed of pairwise trading under incomplete information is modeled in order to analyze how resources are allocated among competing uses when information about trade gains is incomplete. Contrary to the results from studying a single such trade, sufficient homogeneity across potential...

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...