The Fifth Amendment's due process clause requires the prosecution to share evidence with the defense, and its right to silence blocks the jury from drawing an adverse inference from the defendant's silence during trial. I examine the effect of the right to silence and the disclosure requirement...

This paper analyzes the relationship between same-sex marriage bans and sexually transmitted infections using state-level data from 1981 to 2008. We hypothesize that same-sex marriage bans may directly affect homosexual behavior; may affect or mirror social attitudes toward gays, which in turn...

We develop a model of figurative or indirect speech, which may convey a meaning that differs from its literal meaning. The model yields analytical conditions for speech to be figurative in equilibrium and delivers a number of comparative statics results. For instance, it predicts that the...

In many contests, players can influence the outcome through efforts in multiple activities, several of which can be chosen before others. In this paper, we develop a model of dynamic multi-activity contests. Players simultaneously choose efforts in long-run activities, observe each other’s...

We elucidate, connect, and synthesize the literature that employs economics to study the individual rights and freedoms protected by the constitutional amendments comprising The Bill of Rights, including freedom of speech and of the press, the right to bear arms, the right against unreasonable...

This paper examines the impact of titles and other characteristics of published economics articles on the ultimate success of these articles, as measured by their cumulative citations over the six year period following their publication. Interestingly, poetic titles are pivotal to the...

We develop a signaling model of rational lovemaking. In the act of lovemaking, a man and a woman send each other possibly deceptive signals about their true state of ecstasy. For example, if one of the partners is not in ecstasy, then he or she may decide to fake it. The model predicts that (1)...

That sunk costs are not relevant to rational decision-making is often presented as one of the basic principles of economics. When people are influenced by sunk costs in their decision-making, they are said to be committing the sunk cost fallacy. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we argue that, in...

We analyze the effects of the evidence standard for search warrants in an economic model of crime and search. If the warrant standard is initially below a certain positive threshold, increasing it actually reduces crime as well as searches. Moreover, the positive threshold is higher if searches...