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Abstract:
This essay focuses on the discordance between universities with endowments in excess of one billion dollars and what is occurring in the rest of higher education, particularly with respect to skyrocketing tuition and a growing institutional wealth gap. The essay analyzes absolute endowment values, the amount of endowment per student, and expense-endowment ratios at 60 private universities. It concludes that a small number of schools have an excess endowment, and then provides a convenient proxy for determining when an endowment is so large that it should receive less-preferential tax treatment. The essay then considers the effects that large endowments have at their home institutions and throughout higher education, the arguments in defense of large endowments, and some frequently-proposed modifications to the tax code. The essay recommends that policymakers modify the charitable deduction for gifts to universities with mega-endowments, as part of a multi-faceted effort to spur endowment spending and control tuition.

universities, colleges, endowment, charitable deduction, donors, tuition

Abstract:
Some new technologies succeed, while others fail. Networks and multi-sided platforms are an important, but often-overlooked, explanation for these successes and failures. Many technologies will be successful only if their promoters can convince two (or more) sets of heterogeneous users to simultaneously embrace the technology. For example, in the case of credit cards, both consumers and merchants must decide to use the technology. For high definition (HD) televisions, both consumers and broadcasters must adopt the innovation. If only consumers adopted credit cards and HD, but merchants and broadcasters respectively did not, the technologies would fail: with no stores in which to use them, credit cards are as worthless (or perhaps even more so) than HD televisions that have no HD programming.

Because market success for many technologies requires coordination between different groups, there is a powerful incentive for innovators and entrepreneurs to get the government involved: government action, both direct and indirect, can strongly influence consumer and merchant behavior, and thereby ensure simultaneous adoption of the technology. Depending upon the situation, the government may (1) provide the information that allows individuals to coordinate their behavior; (2) pass legislation or adopt policies aimed at reducing concerns about a technology, (3) provide incentives to induce individuals to adopt new technologies, or (4) force change by eliminating or curtailing older technologies.

In this paper, we model how various groups decide whether to adopt and use networked and multi-platform technologies. We also explore when, if ever, the government should involve itself in influencing the success of such technologies. Drawing primarily on a rich set of examples from the payments industry, we conclude that the government generally should not intervene. First, technology moves fast and the government usually moves slowly. Second, with a bit of time, new technologies that are sufficiently advantageous are likely to flourish without government intervention. Third and finally, government interference may have the unintended consequence of dampening the incentive to invest in new technologies in the first instance.

Payments, Norms, Electronic Commerce, Law, Banking, Government

Abstract:
This article uses non-religious male circumcision to explore how social norms affect behavioral cost-benefit analysis. It argues that norms are variables that color every aspect of the analysis, thereby encouraging an individual to either exaggerate or diminish the significance of other factors that figure into the behavioral calculus. To be sure, deviance from, or compliance with, a norm may have its own cost or benefit whether it be guilt, esteem, or the capital that might hinge on whether one sends the optimal social signal. But this article argues that an equally important function of norms is to affect the way individuals understand information, so that from the outset the behavioral outcome is weighted in favor of the predominant social norm. The article then discusses how policymakers might combat the information-distorting effect of norms, again using male circumcision as a case in point.

circumcision, social norms, human behavior, cost benefit analysis, male circumcision, social circumcision

Abstract:
This article focuses on the occupational subculture of the police and its likely effect on community policing and a social norms approach to crime control. It suggests that when an order-maintenance agenda is introduced into a department that retains the traditional reform-era subculture, the agenda can devolve from an effort to enforce norms and creatively solve community problems to an effort to increase felony arrests and unearth the "big collar." Such a devolution entails a number of risks, particularly with respect to young male minorities. The article asks whether community policing, in its current form, can act as a countervailing force against the possibility that police will abuse the license to crack down on disorder. The article examines the hope of humanistic reformers who believe that by recruiting officers with certain characteristics and qualities, departments will create a subculture that is conducive to community policing. While the available information is hardly conclusive, it does suggest that the emphasis on officer characteristics has not led to the results some reformers anticipated. The article suggests that one of the most effective means of breaking through the occupational subculture is to focus on the overarching police function. As originally conceived, community policing sought to change the police function in ways that emphasized problem solving and de-emphasized simple law enforcement. A return to this approach may create the sort of results that reformers seek.

community policing, social norm, broken windows, minority policing, crime control, police subculture, police reform

Abstract:
Proponents of the estate tax generally contend that it is crucial to preventing the economic and moral harms that result from concentrated wealth. The tax has nonetheless met with enormous political hostility, even from Americans who are unlikely to ever pay it. This article draws on insights from cognitive psychology to propose a novel method of rallying public support for what has been vividly deemed the death tax.

The article proposes that Congress amend the estate tax by replacing the charitable deduction with a charitable credit. This would have the practical effect of allowing charitable bequests to offset the amount an estate owes the federal fisc. As such, the proposal dramatically recasts the debate surrounding the tax. Rather than requiring families of the recently deceased to hand over large sums of hard-earned money to the federal government (as the story is now told), the charitable credit allows decedents to identify the charities that will benefit from their wealth. This comports with what lower and middle class Americans anticipate doing in the face of great wealth; capitalizes on widely-held beliefs about the importance of charities and the good they create; and provides greater control and benefits for the taxpayers themselves. The reform also offers benefits to estate tax proponents, to individuals committed to shrinking the size of government and expanding the non-profit sector, and to charities.

Estate taxation, charity, philanthropy, wealth transfer taxation

Abstract:
This article argues that the American legal regime should encourage a market in human milk - the superior source of infant nutrition. It describes the already-existing milk banking system in the United States and posits that building on this model and compensating women who express milk would increase the number of babies receiving breast milk in at least three ways. First, and most obvious, we can expect the promise of a profit to motivate more women to pump milk for someone else's use. Second, and less apparent, mothers who might otherwise choose to formula-feed their babies may breastfeed if they know it will lead to another source of income; initiating an adequate milk supply would be difficult without actually nursing a child. Third, and least obvious (although arguably most important), the creation of a niche market may help convey the value of human milk and convince women to breastfeed even if they are not interested in making sales. The article looks closely at how compensation would affect the safety of banked milk and explores how breast milk fits into the larger normative debate about whether we should permit individuals to sell their bodily materials.

breast feed, human tissue, organ donation, tissue donation, breast milk, milk bank