This paper examines how regulators set local prices in response to the changes brought on by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (“Telecom Act”). We are particularly interested in the extent to which state regulators set prices that promoted efficiency or were influenced by private-interest...

This paper presents a stochastic simulation model to study implications of the mechanisms by which individual software developers’ efforts are allocated within large and complex open source software projects. It illuminates the role of different forms of “motivations-at-the-margin” in the...

This entry for the forthcoming The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics (Second Edition) surveys the economic analysis of five primary fields of law: property law; liability for accidents; contract law; litigation; and public enforcement and criminal law. It also briefly considers some...

A significant challenge to empirically testing theories of discrimination has been the difficulty of identifying taste-based discrimination and of distinguishing it clearly from statistical discrimination. This paper identifies taste-based discrimination through a two-part empirical test. First,...

This paper reflects on the relevance of systems thinking about the interdependent policy issues bearing on the dynamics of science, technology and innovation in their relationship to economic growth. Considering the approach that characterizes much of the current economics literatures treatment...

We provide evidence that the robust association between cognitive skills and economic growth reflects a causal effect of cognitive skills and supports the economic benefits of effective school policy. We develop a new common metric that allows tracking student achievement across countries, over...

Through explicitly incorporating analysts' forecasts as observable factors in a dynamic arbitrage-free model of the yield curve, this research proposes a framework for studying the impact of shifts in market sentiment on interest rates of all maturities. An empirical examination reveals that...

One manifestation of the trend towards the strengthening of copyright protection that has been noticeable during the past two decades is the secular extension of the potential duration during which access to copyrightable materials remains legally restricted. Those restrictions carry clear...

When Social Security was instituted in 1935, the period life expectancy at age 20 for males was 66 and for females 69. Today, 20-year-old males have a period life expectancy of 76 and females, 80. This increase in life expectancy has been accompanied by a corresponding improvement in health at...

The significant set of public policy issues for economic analysis that arise from the tensions between the ‘special benefits’ of the Internet as a platform for innovation, and the drawbacks of the “anomalous” features of the Internet viewed as simply one among the array of...