Some rights to resources adhere to individuals on the basis of ascribed characteristics—these are rights of person. These rights are not subject to voluntary alienation. And there are rights that adhere to specific characteristics of resources and are subject to alienation. These are rights in property. However, there has been a systematic tendency to promote property rights at the expense of t...

The purpose of this article is to analyse the way economists interested in social and economic evolution cite, mention or refer to Darwin. We focus on the attitude of economists towards Darwin’s theory of social evolution – an issue he considered as central to his theory. We show that economists refer to and mention Darwin as a biologist and neglect or ignore his theory of social and cultural e...

The ineffectiveness of a quality accreditation mechanism can be attributed to the inability of the accreditation status to provide consumers with information they do not already possess. I present a structural model of demand allowing consumers to infer quality from both accreditation status and firm reputation. I then estimate this model to assess the effectiveness and the impact of the nation...

This paper presents a model in which goods market distortions lead firms to socially inefficient modes of internal organization. The model seeks to capture the aversion documented by Eccles and White (1988) of middle management aversion to inter-profit center transactions. I consider situations where reputational forces are able to support equilibria in which goods are of high quality. These fo...

This paper models transaction costs as the rents that a monopolistic market maker extracts from impatient investors who trade via limit orders. We show that limit orders are American options. The limit prices inducing immediate execution of the order are functionally equivalent to bid and ask prices and can be solved for various transaction sizes to characterize the market maker’s entire supply...

8 structural entry barriers in particular markets may not encourage Black rm entry. 12 Finally , the model suggests a normative perspective on whether or not Black rm entry should be subsidized. Demsetz (1982) has argued that entry barriers may consitute an endogenous response to consumer preferences. If for example, the basis for consumers having a taste for discrimination is their inability t...

This paper attempts to investigate the theoretical underpinnings for the reasons why firms frequently adopt the dual class equity structure, i.e. a capital (or ownership) structure based on the issuance of shares with differential voting rights (DeAngelo et al. 1985). Such an ownership structure is justified by some researchers as a defensive structure adopted by the directors and managers of a...

Economists, including Paul Samuelson and Jagdish Bhagwati, vigorously debate whether offshore outsourcing in high-tech industries helps or harms the U.S. economy. The main issue is whether insourcing countries, such as China or India, will catch up with and eventually outcompete the U.S. Moreover, the dearth of offshore outsourcing data has hindered the study of the impact of offshore outsourci...

In early nineteenth-century England, there was no professional police force and most prosecutions were private. This paper examines how associations for the prosecution of felons arose to internalize the positive externalities produced by private prosecutions. Drawing upon new historical evidence, it examines how the internal governance and incentive structures of prosecution associations enabl...