Scholars have argued that modern American choice-of-law is subject to three biases: (1) a bias in favor of residents of the forum state (pro-resident bias), (2) a bias in favor of plaintiffs (pro-plaintiff bias), and (3) a bias in favor of the law of the forum (forum law bias). This article...

Legal historians currently make remarkably little use of economic theory or of statistical tests. The neglect of economics and statistics may reflect misperceptions of these fields, both of which have changed dramatically in the last two decades. For example, legal historians may reject economic...

Judges decide cases. Do they also try to influence which cases they decide? Clearly plaintiffs “shop” for the most attractive forum, but do judges try to attract cases by “selling” their courts? Some American judges actively try to enlarge their influence by making their courts...

For many years, most scholars have assumed that the strength of reputational incentives is positively correlated with firm size. Firms that sell more products or services were thought more likely to be trustworthy than those that sell less because larger firms have more to lose if consumers...

Although modern societies generally entrust enforcement of the criminal law to public prosecutors, most crimes in pre-modern societies were prosecuted privately by the victim or a relative. This article is the first rigorously quantitative analysis of private prosecution. It focuses on...

This article analyzes private law enforcement in an environment with corruption. The effect of corruption is studied both under the assumption of monopolistic enforcement by a single private enforcement agency and under the assumption of competitive enforcement by many private enforcers. In...

This article assesses the impact of changes in judicial independence on equity markets. North and Weingast (1989) argue that judicial independence and other institutional changes inaugurated by the Glorious Revolution of 1688--89 improved public and private finance in England by putting...

This paper argues that the key mechanisms protecting retail investors' financial stake in their portfolio investments are indirect. They do not rely on actions by the investors or by any private actor directly charged with looking after investors' interests. Rather, they are provided by the...