"Attention is a scarce cognitive resource" − Daniel Kahneman. Literature on attention and its asset pricing implications suggests that people pay attention to stocks that appear in the media and people tend to buy attention-grabbing stocks. Stock recommendations from the TV show Mad Money and Wall $treet Week have proven to catch people’s attention and create price pressure on the stocks recomm...

We study the role of labor inputs in the production of religion using comprehensive data on every Oklahoma Methodist congregation during 1961-2003. Pastors have large effects on church growth: replacing a 25th percentile pastor with a 75th percentile one increases annual attendance growth by three percent, similar to the effect of a ten percent increase in the surrounding county’s population. A...

We use the geographic distance between a doctor’s office and drug company headquarters to instrument for the likelihood of pecuniary transfers, such as meals or speaking fees. Doctors tilt prescriptions in favor of the paying firm’s drugs, shifting away from both branded and generic substitutes. Larger transfers cause larger shifts in prescriptions. We explore two potential explanations: 1) per...

Using detailed publication and citation data for over 50,000 articles from 30 major economics and finance journals, we investigate whether network proximity to an editor influences research productivity. During an editor’s tenure, his current university colleagues publish about 100% more papers in the editor’s journal, compared to years when he was not editor. In contrast to editorial nepotism,...

The article aims to describe the role of technology and contract in regulating access to digital content deregulating intellectual property law monopoly. In particular it argues that the anti-circumvention provisions for technological protection measures and digital rights management systems enacted in the United States and in Europe compromise the consumer’s capacity to exercise legitimate rig...

This paper describes the process by which firms cooperate to establish product compatibility and interface standards, and studies the impact such standards have on market competition. Special emphasis is given to the treatment of intellectual property rights in the standard-setting context. Based on this economic analysis, the paper offers some general suggestions for the proper antitrust treat...

Using detailed publication and citation data for over 50,000 articles from 30 major economics and finance journals, we investigate whether network proximity to an editor influences research productivity. During an editor’s tenure, his current university colleagues publish about 100% more papers in the editor’s journal, compared to years when he was not editor. In contrast to editorial nepotism,...