Research Contributions
Here I lay out the research lines that I have contributed to and provide a one sentence statement of each paper's finding (but you should, of course, read the full paper!).
Prosecutors: Elections and Plea Bargaining
(1) More convictions come from jury trials and less come from plea bargaining when a prosecutor runs for re-election (see my 2014 paper in Public Choice)
(2) Theoretical investigation of the informational problem between voters and incumbent prosecutors (see my 2015 paper in Journal of Public Economic Theory)
(3) Convictions, when appealed, are more likely to be reversed/modified if the prosecutor was running for re-election (see my 2013 paper in Journal of Empirical Legal Studies)
(4) The wrongful accusation of sexual assault by Duke Lacrosse players led to less prosecution of sex offense cases across the state, primarily during re-election seasons (see my 2019 paper in the Supreme Court Economic Review)
(5) When law enforcement officials die in the line of duty, plea discounts diminish and jury trials become more frequent (see my working paper)
(6) Prosecutor elections encourage elected prosecutors to be more responsive to the public (see my working paper)
(7) Theoretical investigation showing that incumbent prosecutors being challenged provides valuable information to voters (see my 2018 paper in Journal of Public Economic Theory)
(8) Improved salary for prosecutors in NY state improved the incumbency advantage (see my 2021 paper in Southern Economic Journal)
(9) Improved prosecutor pay in NY state did not affect case handling (see my working paper)
(10) The consolidation of prosecutor offices takes advantage of economies of scale leading to more effective prosecution services (see my 2020 paper in Journal of Law and Courts)
(11) Higher quality public service provision, proxied by prosecution services, correlates with good governance, measured using an economic freedom index (see my 2017 paper in Economics of Governance)
Judges, Defense Attorneys, Police, & Arbitrators
(1) Judges who were formerly prosecutors do well in criminal trials, measured by affirmation rate on appeals, relative to judges who were not. During judicial elections, judges who were not formerly prosecutors do even worse (see my 2020 paper in Journal of Legal Studies)
(2) Using a major improvement in judicial pay in NY state, we show that improved performance, measured by affirmation rates on appeal, comes primarily from improved effort (see our 2017 paper in Supreme Court Economic Review)
(3) Laboratory experiment of election contests shows that there are important measurable characters of winners (such as judges and prosecutors), including lower pro-sociality (see our 2019 paper in European Journal of Law and Economics)
(4) Defense attorneys in Florida, who run in popular elections, perform better in the year of their re-election (see my forthcoming paper in Journal of Public Finance and Public Choice)
(5) Theoretical investigation illustrating the reputational effect of public outcry on policing and deterrence (see our 2016 paper in Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy))
(6) The number and experience of the arbitrators influences the ability of the two sides to a dispute to privately resolve it (see our paper in Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization)
Legal System in Classical Athens
(1) Analysis of the arbitration mechanisms used (see my 2018 paper in Constitutional Political Economy)
(2) Antidosis procedure, which was used to determine who should pay taxes, partially resolved the asymmetric information problem (see my 2017 paper in Constitutional Political Economy)
(3) Athenian democracy provided a protection for the elites subject to volatile wealth (see my 2012 paper in Review of Law and Economics)
(4) Jury size varied as a theory of optimal group size would predict (see my 2011 paper in Kyklos)
(5) Criminal trials, such as the one used to prosecute Socrates, had desirable properties (see my 2010 paper in European Journal of Political Economy)
(6) Homicide trials developed plea bargaining like institutions (see my 2010 paper in International Review of Law and Economics)
Pro-social Behavior: Experimental Evidence
(1) Dictator Game experiment with public libraries as recipients. Treatments differ by whether the library had vote to increase property taxes (both pass and fail). Women increase giving for libraries when votes fail (see our 2021 paper in Economics Letters)
(2) Trust and trustworthiness affect bidding behavior in auctions when sellers can bid on their own item; known as shill bidding (see our 2020 paper in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance)
(3) Contributing effort is a public good for committee members. This affects the result that group accuracy improves with group size - Condorcet Jury Theorem (see our theoretical investigation in our 2016 paper in Public Choice) - and is driven by members pro-sociality (see our experimental investigation in our 2020 paper in Southern Economic Journal)
(4) Participating in microfinance promotes pro-sociality amongst rural Ugandans (see our 2019 paper in Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics)
(5) Trust and contract enforcement are complements (see our 2018 paper in Journal of Institutional Economics)
(6) Going first improves contributions to public goods, and followers respond to the generosity of the leader (see my 2018 paper in the Scottish Journal of Political Economy)
(7) Cooperative behavior can be explained by the strength of one's Theory of Mind (see our 2017 paper in Economics Letters)
(8) Hypocrisy aversion affects rule enforcement (see our 2021 paper in Research in Experimental Economics)
(9) A preference for economic freedom explains giving in the Trust Game and Dictator Game (see my 2014 paper in Journal of Institutional Economics)
(10) Failing to vote to include low income individuals into a group lowers the pro-sociality of the group (see our 2019 paper in Economics of Governance)
(11) Overconfidence in one's financial literacy explains behavior in the Trust Game (see our 2016 paper in Journal of Economics and Finance)
(12) Finance education affects trust-based investing (see our 2015 paper in Journal of Behavioral Finance)
(13) Finance education affects pro-social behavior (see my 2014 paper in Journal of Experimental and Behavioral Finance)
(14) Economics education affects pro-social behavior (see my 2014 paper in American Economist)
Crime and Deterrence
(1) Domestic violence increases after unexpected losses of NBA teams (see my forthcoming paper in Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization)
(2) The abuse cases by a former coach at Penn St. lowered the quality of the student body (see my 2021 paper in Journal of Sports Economics)
(3) Lab experiment illustrates that both social history and social norms explain deviant behavior (see my 2017 paper in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics)
(4) The ability to "squawk" about crime (i.e., public outcry) affects reputationally-motivated law enforcement (see my 2016 paper in Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy)
(5) Italy's response to ransom kidnapping, raising the punishment's severity, means that the marginal cost to murder is less (i.e., marginal deterrence) and lead to more murders (see my 2015 paper in the International Review of Law and Economics)
(6) A policy Italy experimented with seizes assets of the victims of ransom kidnapping, so that the benefits to kidnapping are reduced. This lead to a bifurcation in the duration of kidnappings with either very short "express kidnappings" or very long durations (see my 2014 paper in Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy)
(7) Theoretical model of sophisticated law enforcement and adaptive offenders shows how asymmetric sophistication can affect deterrence strategies (see my 2011 paper in International Game Theory Review)
(8) Punishments usually take the form of schedules where first offenses are treated lightly relative to repeat offenders. I show theoretically that this can be explained as a screening mechanism differentiating those who commit substantial harm from those who do not (see my 2009 paper in Contemporary Economic Policy)
Sports Economics
(1) The abuse cases by a former coach at Penn St. lowered the quality of the student body (see my 2021 paper in Journal of Sports Economics)
(2) The wrongful accusation of sexual assault by Duke Lacrosse players led to less prosecution of sex offense cases across the state, primarily during re-election seasons (see my 2019 paper in the Supreme Court Economic Review)
(3) Test whether gambling markets are efficient by analyzing the use of replacement referees in the NFL (see my 2015 paper in Journal of Gambling Business and Economics)
(4) The Offsetting Behavior Hypothesis states that risky behavior increases when safety is improved. I extend this to a its game theoretic equivalent (Strategic Offsetting Behavior) where a policy intended to help out one individual changes the incentives of someone s/he is in competition with which acts to offset the policy. I show evidence of this by considering the moving of the 3-point line in NCAA basketball and show that it lead to a defensive shift and total scoring reduced (see my 2011 paper in Contemporary Economic Policy)
Text Analysis
(1) Evaluating trial transcripts from criminal trials in 1700s and 1800s London courts reveals the impact that defense counsel had (see our working paper)
(2) The informational value provided by text analysis using Latent Dirichlet Allocation is hill shaped - using descriptions of wine in a hedonic price regression (see my working paper)
(3) The text in wine descriptions provides valuable information to consumers (see my 2020 paper in Journal of Wine Economics)
(4) The readability of introductions to papers in the AER correlates with their citation counts (see my 2019 paper in Economics Letters)
Economic Freedom
(1) A preference for economic freedom explains giving in the Trust Game and Dictator Game (see my 2014 paper in Journal of Institutional Economics)
(2) Higher quality public service provision, proxied by prosecution services, correlates with good governance, measured using an economic freedom index (see my 2017 paper in Economics of Governance)
(3) The Economic Freedom of North American can be re-scaled to create a growth-enhancing economic freedom score, which can be used to identify which policy dimensions need the most improvement in a state (see our 2017 paper in Journal of Financial Economic Policy)
(4) The Chicago Boys (a group of Chilean economists trained at the University of Chicago) created sustained economic prosperity in Chile. GDP per capita in 2019 is 4012 USD higher because of their reforms in the late 70s and early 80s (see my working paper).