Buying the better brawler
If you get sued or want to sue someone, you’ll want to hire the best lawyer you can afford. For about a century after the Norman invasion in 1066, things worked similarly in England--except that your representation was a brawler, not a barrister. To resolve property disputes, judges arranged a duel, for which each claimant could hire a brawler; better brawlers commanded a higher price. According to an economist, this was a “sensible and effective” way to resolve property disputes in the context of a feudal system with encumbered ownership and no real estate market. This approach tended to award property to the claimant who paid for a better brawler, and therefore put a higher value on the property. In addition, this approach encouraged less corruption than a regular auction and had the ancillary benefit of entertaining the public. And, like our present legal system, most claimants ended up settling anyway, often right before trial, especially after getting a glimpse of the opposing counsel.
Leeson, P., “Trial by Battle,” Journal of Legal Analysis (Spring 2011).
Pot: the beer of teenagers
People use drugs in order to achieve an altered state--and, a new study suggests, they may not care just what kind of altered state that is. Since drugs are costly and may not go well together, they sometimes act as substitutes, which is an economic term for when use of one commodity displaces use of the other. Comparing the reported drug use of people just below and just above the age of 21, two economists found that marijuana use declines by about 10 percent after one can drink legally, especially among women. This suggests that one of the downsides of a minimum drinking age is that it pushes young people into alternative drug use.
Crost, B. & Guerrero, S., “The Effect of Alcohol Availability on Marijuana Use: Evidence from the Minimum Legal Drinking Age,” Journal of Health Economics (forthcoming).
Yesterday’s economic news today
