Anatomy of the Rise and Fall of a Price-Fixing Conspiracy: Auctions at Sotheby's and Christie's

The Sotheby's–Christie's price-fixing scandal that endedin the public trial of Alfred Taubman provides a unique windowon a number of key economic and antitrust policy issues. Thetrial provided detailed evidence as to how the price-fixingworked, and the economic conditions under which it was startedand began to fall apart. The role of the amnesty program wasimportant to the case, and does not appear to have had a rolein the cartel's enforcement of price-fixing or the cartel'sdemise. The outcome of the case also provides evidence on theauction process used to choose the lead counsel for the civilsettlement. Finally, though buyers received the bulk of thedamages, a straightforward application of the economic theoryof auctions shows that it is unlikely that successful buyersas a group were injured.     

Evaluating the Role of Brown v. Board of Education in School Equalization, Desegregation, and the Income of African Americans

The public profile of the Brown v. Board of Education decisiontends to overshadow the well-established fact that racial disparitiesin school resources in the South began narrowing 20 years beforethe Brown decision and that school desegregation did not beginon a large scale in the Deep South until ten years after theBrown decision. We instead view Brown as a highly visible markerof public policy’s mid-century reversal on matters ofrace. When we examine the labor market outcomes of male workersin 1990, we find that southern-born blacks who would have finishedtheir schooling just before effective desegregation occurredin the South fared poorly compared to southern-born blacks whofollowed behind them in school by just a few years, relativeto northern-born blacks in same age cohorts.