Is it better to move first, or second— to innovate, or to imitate? We look at this in a context with both asymmetric information and payoff externalities. Suppose two players, one with superior information about market quality, consider entering one of two new markets immediately or waiting...

Many observers suggest that American citizens sue more readily than citizens elsewhere, and that American judges shape society more powerfully than judges elsewhere. We examine the problems involved in exploring these questions quantitatively. The data themselves indicate that American law’s...

Using micro-level data on attorney incomes, we reconstruct the industrial organization of the Japanese legal services industry. These data suggest a bifurcated bar, with two sources of unusually high income: an idiosyncratic return to talent in Tokyo, and a compensating differential for the lack...

Most studies of executive compensation have data on pay but not total income. Because exchange-listed Japanese firms (unlike exchange-listed U.S. firms) need not disclose executive compensation figures in their securities filings, most studies on Japan lack even good data on pay. Through 2004,...

It is natural to suppose that a prosecutor's conviction rate-the ratio of convictions to cases prosecuted-is a sign of his competence. Prosecutors, however, choose which cases to prosecute. If they prosecute only the strongest cases, they will have high conviction rates. Any system that pays...

Colleges want to increase retention and graduation rates, but they are also under pressure to control costs. Increasing class size is a common method to reduce per student costs. This paper examines the relationship between class size and student achievement. Using data from a selective liberal...