Rule of Law

Scholars and practitioners have documented how regulatory agencies have increasingly relied on guidance, best-practice documents, policy statements, and other informal pronouncements to achieve regulatory ends. Agencies often do so to avoid executive regulatory review and other accountability measures that ostensibly slow the regulatory process. This paper adds to this growing literature to incorporate policymaking through the issuance of completely unenforceable threats.

The comparative performance of academic and economic markets continues to be debated. One factor potentially distinguishing academic markets is the profit motive.

Property rights are one of the most fundamental and highly robust institutions supporting economic performance. However, the channels through which property rights are achieved are not adequately identified.

This essay uses the Philippines as a case study to suggest what is wrong with leading development prescriptions.

This paper empirically evaluates two competing theories of electoral accountability in the context of New Orleans’ 2006 mayoral election. According to the democratic efficiency theory, voters can successfully punish ineffective political agents by removing them from office. In contrast, the public choice theory argues that the bundled nature of political goods prevents voters from successfully holding ineffective politicians accountable.

For over a century England's judicial system decided land disputes by ordering disputants' legal representatives to bludgeon one another before an arena of spectating citizens. The victor won the property right for his principal. The vanquished lost his cause and, if he were unlucky, his life. People called these combats trials by battle. This paper investigates the law and economics of trial by battle.

For over a century England's judicial system decided land disputes by ordering disputants' legal representatives to bludgeon one another before an arena of spectating citizens. People called these