Theories of the size of government focus on either the demand for government or the supply of tax revenues. Demand side theories such as those of Peltzman, Meltzer and Richard, Husted and Kenny, and Lott and Kenny are essentially political theories. They emphasize the role of voters or interest...

We elucidate, connect, and synthesize the literature that employs economics to study the individual rights and freedoms protected by the constitutional amendments comprising The Bill of Rights, including freedom of speech and of the press, the right to bear arms, the right against unreasonable...

This is an op-ed from the May 7, 2007 Washingtonpost.com. I argue that our evolved attitudes and preferences have influences on public policy. I use the example of the international economy - including immigration and trade - to illustrate this argument. Our evolved intuition is for a zero-sum...

Item pricing laws (IPLs) require a price tag on every item sold by a retailer. We study IPLs and assess their efficiency by quantifying their costs and comparing them to previously documented benefits. On the cost side, we posit that IPLs should lead to higher prices because they increase the...

The battle over immigration reform is a recent manifestation of a long debate over the relationship between the United States and other countries. To economists, these issues are easy. Since at least the work of David Ricardo (1772-1823), economists have known that international trade is...

In this paper, we examine the costs and benefits of laws requiring businesses to notify consumers if their private data is compromised, such as the law in California and other state and federal laws recently passed or proposed. Identity theft and related frauds do not seem to be increasing in...

We analyze decision-making in a simple model of the judicial hierarchy. We assume that trial court judges are more concerned with ex post efficiency with respect to the individuals involved in the cases at hand, and less concerned with ex ante efficiency with respect to the precedents...

It was originally thought that the structure of the common law would not allow rent seeking. More recently, scholars have realized that there is room for rent seeking, and that attorneys are engaged in exactly this process. This rent seeking has led to a great increase in the scope of U.S. tort...

The literature written by physicians about pharmaceutical marketing and promotion generally views this activity as harmful. This harm supposedly occurs because physicians who have contact with pharmaceutical sales representatives sometimes change their prescribing behavior. However, this result...