Optimal Law Enforcement with a Rent-Seeking Government

This article analyzes public and private law enforcement whenthe government is motivated by rent seeking. A rent-seekinggovernment seeks primarily to maximize revenue. The articleconcludes as follows: (1) if offenders have sufficient wealth,a rent-seeking government is more aggressive than a social-welfare-maximizinggovernment in enforcing laws against minor crimes (such as parkingviolations) but more lax in enforcing laws against major crimes;(2) competitive private enforcement is usually better and neverworse than monopolistic private enforcement; (3) The choicebetween competitive private enforcement and public enforcementdepends on which is cheaper and on the severity of the offense.     

The transformation of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

Between 2000 and 2005, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, until recently, the Food Stamp Program) caseload increased by half. As the Great Recession unfolded, the SNAP caseload grew even more rapidly. Further, over the past two decades the composition of the caseload has shifted sharply away from families combining food and cash assistance and toward families receiving food assistance in the absence of any other major, means‐tested income support. By analyzing components of the caseload separately, we provide new and more insightful estimates of the effects of food and cash assistance policies and the economy on both the change in the composition of the caseload and the large caseload swings over the 1990s and 2000s. We find that the economy can explain a portion of caseload changes, but not compositional shifts. Food and cash assistance policies help to explain both changes. In total, the combination of SNAP and welfare policy changes account for about half of the sharp increase since 1994 in the share of SNAP households receiving food, but not cash, assistance. © 2011 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

The Value of Judicial Independence: Evidence from Eighteenth Century England

This article assesses the impact of changes in judicial independenceon equity markets. North and Weingast (1989) argue that judicialindependence and other institutional changes inaugurated bythe Glorious Revolution of 1688–89 improved public andprivate finance in England by putting restraints on the government.We calculate abnormal equity returns at critical points in thepassage of statutes giving judges greater security of tenureand higher salaries. Early-eighteenth-century legislation grantingtenure during good behavior is associated with large and statisticallysignificant positive abnormal returns. Other statutes had positivebut generally insignificant effects.