This paper proposes a test of racial bias in capital sentencing based upon patterns of judicial errors in lower courts. We model the behavior of the trial court as minimizing a weighted sum of the probability of sentencing an innocent and that of letting a guilty defendant free. We de?ne racial...

This paper provides a critical survey of the literature on politico-institutional determinants of the government budget. We organize our discussion around two questions: Why did certain OECD countries, but not others, accumulate large public debts? Why did these fiscal imbalances appear in the...

This paper studies how the composition of fiscal adjustments influences their likelihood of "success," defined as a long-lasting deficit reduction, and their macroeconomic consequences. We find that fiscal adjustments that rely primarily on spending cuts in transfers and the government wage bill...

As events highlight deep divisions in attitudes between America and Europe, this is a very timely study of different approaches to the problems of domestic inequality and poverty. Based on careful and systematic analysis of national data, the authors describe just how much the two continents...

We propose a test of bias based upon patterns of judicial errors. We model the trial court as minimizing a weighted sum of type I and II errors. We define racial bias a situation where the weight depends on defendant/victim race. If the court is unbiased, the error rate should be independent of...

In this paper we critically review the literature on the political economy of monetary policy, with an eye on the questions raised by the recent financial crisis. We begin with a discussion of rules versus discretion. We then examine the issue of the central bank's independence (CBI) both in...

Flexible labor markets require geographically mobile workers to be efficient. Otherwise firms can take advantage of the immobility of workers and extract rents at the expense of workers. In cultures with strong family ties, moving away from home is costly. Thus, to limit the rents of firms and...

The allocation of responsibilities between central and local governments and their fiscal relationship is one of the most important and complex issues of public finance. The general tendency around the world in the last decade has been toward more decentralization, that is delegation of more...