The cost of higher education in the United States has risen dramatically in recent years. Numerous explanations have been provided to explain this increase. This paper focuses on one contributing factor: The dramatic growth in the size and expense of non-academic administrators and other...

The Austrian contribution to the development of law and economics is the study of endogenous rule formation, or the spontaneous evolution of social institutions, which can be traced to the founder of the Austrian School, Carl Menger. While Menger's emphasis on spontaneous institutional analysis...

Is the common law efficient? Neoclassical economists debate whether our inherited systems of judge-made law maximize wealth whereas Austrian economists typically adopt much different standards. The article reviews neoclassical and Austrian arguments about efficiency in the common law. After...

Behavioral Law & Economics (BLE) has loudly proclaimed its victory over traditional law & economics methodologies. Nowhere has this proclamation been so loud or self-certain as with respect to claims about consumer financial decision-making. Drawing on a set of casual observations styled as...

In this paper we provide an explanation for why the Chapter 11 reorganization process cannot accurately value and reorganize an insolvent firm. Due to the information and incentive vacuum of the reorganization process, Chapter 11 places the bankruptcy judge is in the same institutional setting...

A growing number of state governors are voicing concern about the damage inflicted on their states' budgets—on both the revenue and the expenditure sides—by the COVID-19 pandemic. The situation is particularly dire for the many states that entered the current crisis with “preexisting...

In this article we examine the merits the arguments furthered by the field of behavioral law and economics over credit card surcharge fees. Claims about the real-world application of behavioral economic theories should not be uncritically accepted — especially when advanced to challenge a...

From guns to lead paint to sub-prime mortgages to global climate change, use of the common law doctrine of public nuisance to recover damages allegedly caused by the actions of multiple parties over many years is rising. These efforts have met with mixed results, and there are serious doubts...

This congressional testimony summarizes the effects on consumers and the economy of Dodd-Frank, the Durbin Amendment the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and other government regulations (such as the CARD Act of 2009) enacted in the wake of the recent financial crisis. The testimony notes...