Normative law and economics remains controversial decades after its emergence despite its successes in legal scholarship and its similarity to influential approaches in economics. The reason is that many of its proponents have exaggerated its value for policy while discounting other methods,...

We provide experimental evidence for the existence of “rent stigma,” a preference for owning goods or real estate to renting them. In one experiment, anonymous respondents preferred owning a car or house to renting them even though the transaction was constructed to be identical in each case...

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...

During the height of the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009, the government bailed out numerous corporations, including banks, investment banks, and automobile manufacturers. While the bailouts helped end the financial crisis, they were intensely controversial at the time, and were marred by the...

Politicians and commentators have from time to time proposed that regulations be suspended or delayed during recessions because of their adverse impact on employment. We evaluate this argument from within a macroeconomic framework. We argue that a case can be made for what we call...

Regulatory agencies are required to perform cost-benefit analysis of major rules. However, in many cases regulators refuse to report a monetized value for the benefits of a rule that they issue. Sometimes, they report no monetized value; at other times, they report a monetized value but also...

Financial regulators should use cost-benefit analysis (CBA) to evaluate financial regulations. Finance is an ideal domain for CBA because the direct costs and benefits of financial activity can be easily monetized, and a huge amount of data exists for calculating the relevant valuations. John...

In an earlier article, Regulation, Unemployment, and Cost-Benefit Analysis, we argued that regulatory agencies should incorporate the costs of unemployment into cost-benefit analyses of proposed regulations. We argued that alternatives to including unemployment costs in cost-benefit analysis —...