According to entrenched conventional wisdom, the president enjoys considerable advantages over other litigants in the Supreme Court. Because of the central role of the presidency in the U.S. government, and the expertise and experience of the Solicitor General's office, the president usually...

Countries have entered several hundred bilateral labor agreements (BLAs), which control the conditions under which source countries send migrant workers to host countries. What has not been fully explained, or empirically tested, is why countries would sign these agreements. We conduct a...

Recent literature has suggested that antitrust regulation is an appropriate response to labor market monopsony. This article qualifies the primacy of antitrust by arguing that a significant degree of labor market power is “frictional,” that is, without artificial barriers to entry or...

In the last several years, economists have learned about an antitrust problem of vast scope. Far from approximating the conditions of perfect competition as long assumed, most labor markets are characterized by monopsony — meaning that employers pay workers less than their productivity because...

Recent empirical studies have revealed that labor market monopsony is far more common than previously thought, and that there is a strong correlation between wage suppression and labor market concentration. Yet few antitrust cases have been brought by workers against employers who exercise...

How do regulatory agencies decide how strictly to regulate an industry? They sometimes use cost-benefit analysis or claim to, but more often the standards they invoke are so vague as to be meaningless. This raises the question whether the agencies use an implicit standard or instead regulate in...

This survey of the law and economics of consumer finance discusses economic models of consumer lending and evaluates the major consumer finance laws in light of them. We focus on usury laws; restrictions on creditor remedies, such as the ban on expansive security interests; bankruptcy law;...

Constitutional and legislative restrictions on the timing of legislation and regulation are ubiquitous but these timing rules have received little attention in the legal literature. Yet the timing of a law can be just as important as its content. The timing of a law determines whether its...

The rise of China raises questions about the future of international law. The current system of international law depends largely on American hegemony, along with the dominance of western European states that share America's general goals and values. It is possible that China in the future will...

This essay replies to criticisms advanced at a conference on our book, The Limits of International Law. We engage the critics on several methodological issues, we attempt to correct misimpressions about some of our arguments, and we reiterate our distinctive empirical claims. We also argue that...