Do legal rules matter for economic outcomes? Can changing the details of specific laws affect overall institutions in a way that will have a significant short-term impact? Is it particularly effective to change securities law and regulation? For all three questions, a common answer in both economics and law is “no.” The intellectual underpinning for this position is influential work by Ronald C...

Events of recent years have revived interest in whether wealth effects exist in consumption. Recent studies have obtained contrasting results on wealth effects. Findings and procedures across studies can be categorized as falling in to the "Endogenous Consumption" and "Endogenous Wealth" groups. This paper examines the long-run and short-run dynamic relationship between aggregate consumption, r...

A durable good is a long-lasting good that can be consumed repeatedly over time, and a duropolist is a monopolist in the market of a durable good. Theoretically, less is known about durable goods than their more well-studied counterparts, consumable and perishable goods. It was quite startling, therefore, when Ronald Coase (1972) conjectured that a duropolist has no monopoly power at all! Speci...

In recent years, interest in the role of institutions in economic society has increased and economists have been forced to incorporate them into economic analysis. The institutional perspective has not only brought new challenges for economics, but also led to a re-evaluation, redefinition, and transformation of the discipline itself. It would not be an overstatement to say that the method by w...