Law and Economics II

Empirical Law and Economics

Abstract: The theory of law and economics exploded in the 1970s and 1980s and today is a well accepted approach to law adopted by all the major law schools in the United States.  In the past 15 years greater attention has focused on testing, illustrating and expanding the theory with empirical methods. In this class we will do two things.  First, we will review and explain some important techniques in econometrics that are widely used in empirical law and economics.  Second we will exame empirical studies of property law, divorce, torts, crime, discrimination, and the effect of law on freedom and economic growth.  Attention will be paid to research methods as well as to substantive conclusions and open areas for more research.


Syllabus


Homework One
Data for Figure One in Ho et al. in Stata format
Homework  Two
Data for Homework Two (dta format)
Homework Three

Crime and Tort Data

Harvard Law School Data Directory
National Consortium on Violence Research
Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research
National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (subset of ICPSR)
National Center for State Courts
Civil Justice Survey of State Courts, 1992, 1996, 2001
Bureau of Justice Statistics
FBI: Uniform Crime Reports
Federal District-Court Civil Cases: Online Database Access
State Court Civil Jury Trials: Online Database Access
National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS)
Chicago Map Crime Data
Washington DC Map Crime Data

Other Places to find Interesting Data

Random Stuff: Many Eyes, Swivel and Data360.
National and State Accounts Data:  Bureau of Economic Analysis
Labor Market and Price Data:  Bureau of Labor Statistics
International Data:  NationMaster.com, Doing Business, The World Bank
Census Data:  U.S. Census Bureau
Data Clearing House: Stat USA; Fedstats, Statistical Abstract of the United States, Resources for Economists
World Data including Population Data:  CIESIN
Political and Social Data:  ICPSR
Campaign Finance Data:  Federal Election Commission
Health Data:  Centers for Disease Control and CDC Wonder System
Voting/Ideology Data:  Poole and Rosenthal Roll Call Data
Crime Data:  Bureau of Justice Statistics
Education Statistics:  National Center for Education Statistics
Legislative Data:  Library of Congress -- Thomas
Environmental Data:  EPA
Religion Data:  American Religion Data Archive
Financial Data:  Financial Data Finder
Political Speculation Data:  Iowa Electronic Markets
Opinions: General Social Survey

Charitable Contribution Data:  The Urban Institute