Advance tax rulings allow taxpayers to achieve certainty about the tax consequences of contemplated transactions, and are thus considered indispensable in the modern world of tax administration and compliance. After providing empirical evidence of tax law uncertainty, which should give rise to a...

In many contexts, U.S. tax law grants a favorable tax treatment to transactions of one type and an adverse treatment to transactions of another type. The task of tax authorities is to draw lines in legally gray areas, distinguishing between economically similar transactions that should receive...

Across areas of law administrative agencies employ four basic policymaking strategies: rulemaking, adjudication, advance ruling and licensing. How should administrative agencies choose among these policymaking strategies? I develop a model which captures the idea that rules are inherently...

How should fringe benefits be taxed? Though fringe benefits are covered in every basic law school course on federal income taxation, no widely accepted economic framework has developed for thinking about their taxation. As a result, policymakers lack a clear picture of the benefits and costs of...

Why do some countries mandate a long maternity leave, while others mandate only a short one? In a standard mandated benefits model mandated maternity leave makes hiring women more costly, and therefore reduces women's employment and real wages. We incorporate into the standard model society's...

Many statutes are administered by administrative agencies. This paper shows that, when interpreting an ambiguous statute, administrative agencies choose between two strategies of statutory interpretation: the risky strategy, a relatively aggressive interpretation that provokes an appeal by the...

Can language be centrally planned and controlled? Friedrich Hayek considered language the archetypal example of spontaneous order, yet many countries adopt a planned order approach to language, attempting to centrally plan and control it through language academies. I collect original data on the...