Financial plumbing is taken for granted, except when things go wrong. It was only a few years ago, for example, that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York saw the mess in the derivatives market, where transactions were recorded on slips of paper and sometimes misplaced before the Fed forced the...

One of the questions or challenges we constantly wrestle with at Kauffman is “how could annual U.S. economic growth be increased by one additional percentage point?” It is not an idle question. If, for example, the economy grew at 4 percent annually rather than 3 percent, GDP would double...

Does a State's regulatory scheme that permits in-state wineries directly to ship alcohol to consumers but restricts the ability of out-of-state wineries to do so violate the dormant Commerce Clause in light of Sec. 2 of the Twenty-first Amendment?

This paper provides an economic analysis of the residential real estate brokerage industry. We find that the traditional model for residential real estate brokerage services may be dated, and could be improved substantially with some public policy interventions that spur innovation.We believe...

This paper reviews the US and European experiences with regulatory oversight and the use of formal tools to analyze regulation. We conclude that the US and Europe have made some progress in improving regulatory analysis and oversight, but they can do much more. We offer six recommendations for...

This paper reviews the US and European experiences with regulatory oversight and the use of formal tools to analyze regulation. We conclude that the US and Europe have made some progress in improving regulatory analysis and oversight, but they can do much more.We offer six recommendations for...

Prediction markets are markets for contracts that yield payments based on the outcome of an uncertain future event, such as a presidential election. Using these markets as forecasting tools could substantially improve decision making in the private and public sectors. We argue that U.S....

Network neutrality issues have been vigorously debated worldwide over the past few years. One major aim of network neutrality proponents is to prevent high-speed Internet service providers from charging content providers for priority delivery. Recently, proponents have turned their attention to...