Scholarly Papers
12/21/01
The Logic of Collective Action
Olson, M.
Narrow special interests are often more politically powerful because they are easier to organize and the benefits of membership exceed the cost of participation.
08/30/01
Aid for AIDS
Philipson, T.
Benefit/cost analysis applied to the epidemiology of AIDS leads to surprising behavioral implications and policy recommendations.
12/08/00
The Blind Leading the Blind
Hirshleifer D.
An informational cascade occurs when people blindly follow the early movers, but can be quickly reversed in the light of trusted information.
12/08/00
Owners, Keepers?
Bohn & Deacon
Stronger property rights may reduce overexploitation of natural resources that require little upfront capital investment, but may lead to faster exploitation of resources that require substantial upfront capital investment.
10/24/00
Why Are Better Seats "Underpriced"?
Cheung, N. S.
Better seats might be deliberately underpriced to sell them out so as to prevent customers with cheaper seats to switch to unoccupied better and more expensive seats.
10/06/00
Private Truths and Public Lies
Kuran, T.
Private preferences, long suppressed by public sanctions, may suddenly surface to overthrow the status quo when a precipitating spark reveals a critical mass of fellow dissenters.
09/26/00
The Economics of Superstars
Rosen, S.
Joint consumption technology combined with imperfect substitution of consumer preferences can lead to outsized rewards to a few superstars in mass entertainment businesses.
09/26/00
Systems Competition and Network Effects
Katz & Shapiro
A dominant network based on a near universal standard can internalize a great deal of system externality to the benefits of network users and can persist even in the face of technically superior competing networks.
04/14/00
The Soviet Union - Super Power or Paper Tiger?
Olson, M.
The dismal transition of the centrally planned Soviet economy to a market economy results from the collapse of an effective government with an encompassing interest and the non-existence of secure property rights.
02/02/00
Transaction Costs and Market Structure
Wang, N.
The ubiquitous existence of transactions costs in the real world determines both the institutional structure within which prices are set and the level of prices.
11/05/99
The Origin of Predictable Behavior
Heiner, R. A.
Economic behavior is predictable largely because bounded rationality leads people to adopt rules of thumb which display greater regularity than does optimization.
09/28/99
Disruptive Technology
Christensen, C. M.
Dominant companies' preoccupation with pleasing high-end customers for higher profit margin inadvertently creates niches at the low-end of the market for start-ups to invade.
09/03/99
The Harried Leisure Class
Linder, S. B.
Consumers in rich countries have become harried in their futile attempt to increase the productivity of their non-work time.
08/20/99
Doing It Now or Later
O'Donoghue & Rabin
People who believe that they will procrastinate when faced with immediate costs and prematurely appropriate immediate rewards may counteract this tendency sometimes to their own benefits.
08/13/99
The Tyranny of Small Decisions
Kahn, A. E.
Decisions that are small in size, time perspective, and in relation to their cumulative effect may lead to suboptimal resource allocation.
08/13/99
The Tragedy of the Anticommons
Heller, M.
When too many individuals have the right of exclusion to a scarce resource, and no one has an effective privilege of use, under-utilization may occur.
08/13/99
The Evolution of Defectors and Cooperators
Frank, Robert
There is selective advantage in being always honest even when it may be disadvantageous to do so at times.
08/13/99
Prices and Sanctions?
Cooter, R.
Prices compel decision makers to consider the monetary costs of their acts, whereas sanctions deter people from doing what is wrong.