After Czech voucher privatization many companies simply ignored the interests of their shareholders. The government has since increased the amount of regulation, but they have failed to establish significant investor confidence. This article offers some explanations of why their legal centric...

Does economics justify restricting alcohol consumption? A new line of research concludes that alcohol involves significant social costs and that various restrictions would lead to net social gains. This article focuses on Levy and Miller (1995), who conduct a cost-benefit analysis of...

A number of theorists assume that drinking has harmful economic effects, but data show that drinking and earnings are positively correlated. We hypothesize that drinking leads to higher earnings by increasing social capital. If drinkers have larger social networks, their earnings should...

In most areas, economists look to competition to align incentives, but not so with courts. Many believe that competition enables plaintiff forum shopping, but Adam Smith praised rivalry among courts. This article describes the courts when the common law developed. In many areas of law, courts...

Does the emergence of a stock market require a well-developed legal and/or regulatory system? Although historical work by Neal and Davis [Neal, L., & Davis, L. (2005). The evolution of the rules and regulations of the first emerging markets: The London, New York, and Paris stock exchanges,...

Most economists assume that markets depend on government to enforce contracts and rules against default or fraud. With small transactions, however, the cost to use the legal system far exceeds the value at stake in a contract, and even with large contracts, the legal system often cannot solve...

Inclusionary zoning ordinances are not an effective way of making housing more affordable. Inclusionary zoning is nothing more than a price control. By diminishing incentives for landowners to provide land for housing and incentives for builders to undertake projects, inclusionary zoning...