Efficiency and the Division of Marital Assets

This paper examines the incentives that property division laws can have for divorce and investment in marital assets. This paper considers an environment in which spouses have multiple inputs, such as time and money, to a marital asset but the choices a spouse makes with regards to one input, say time, are not observable to the courts. In such an environment, it is demonstrated that when spouses specialize, as in a traditional family structure, the common-law rule may be efficiency enhancing. However, when both spouses work and strong consumption complementarities are present, equal division leads to more efficient investment in the marital asset. Further, sufficient conditions are found for which the community rule leads to a lower divorce rate than the common-law rule.divorce, efficiency, marital property

What You Don't See Can't Hurt You: An Economic Analysis of Morality Laws

This paper provides an efficiency explanation for regulation of sex, drugs and gambling (the so-called ``morality laws''). The argument is motivated by the observation that the design an enforcement of these laws often promotes discretion by the people engaging in such activities. We propose that morality laws can be best explained by considering the proscribed activities to impose a negative externality on others when the activity is observed. In such a case, efficiency requires discretion by the individual who engages in such activities. When discretion is difficult to regulate directly, the activities can instead be proscribed thereby giving individuals incentive to hide their actions from others. We find conditions for the first-best levels of consumption and hiding to be implementable. In addition, since some level of activity is efficient, this paper provides another environment in which the optimal sanctions are not maximal.Crime; Externality; Laws; Morality; Enforcement

Deterrence in Rank-Order Tournaments

In a tournament, competitors may engage in undesirable activities, or 'cheating', in order to gain an advantage. Examples of such activities include the taking of steroids, plagiarism, and 'creative accounting'. This paper considers the problem of deterrence of these activities and finds that there exist special considerations that are not present in a traditional model of law enforcement. For example, an agent's returns to cheating depend on the cheating decisions of others, and so there may exist multiple equilibria. The problem of multiple equilibria can be reduced when the first-place prize is awarded to the person that performed best without cheating. Moreover, we show that re-awarding prizes reduces the amount of monitoring required to ensure compliance. We also demonstrate that monitoring costs can be further reduced by monitoring the winner of the tournament more than the loser, and by manipulating prizes, including through the introduction of prizes for non-winners.Enforcement; Cheating; Tournament

In-flight total forces, moments and static aeroelastic characteristics of an oblique-wing research airplane

A low-speed flight investigation has provided total force and moment coefficients and aeroelastic effects for the AD-1 oblique-wing research airplane. The results were interpreted and compared with predictions that were based on wind tunnel data. An assessment has been made of the aeroelastic wing bending design criteria. Lateral-directional trim requirements caused by asymmetry were determined. At angles of attack near stall, flow visualization indicated viscous flow separation and spanwise vortex flow. These effects were also apparent in the force and moment data

Ground-effect analysis of a jet transport airplane

An analysis of the ground effect of a jet transport airplane has been made. Data were obtained from recent flight tests primarily using the constant angle-of-attack approach technique. Reasonable results were obtained for ground-effect pitching moment and lift increments. These were compared with data from other sources, including computations, wind tunnel, and previous flight test. A recommended ground-effect model was developed from the results. A brief simulator study was conducted to determine the sensitivity of a particular configuration to this ground-effect model and its associated uncertainty

Flight-determined aerodynamic derivatives of the AD-1 oblique-wing research airplane

The AD-1 is a variable-sweep oblique-wing research airplane that exhibits unconventional stability and control characteristics. In this report, flight-determined and predicted stability and control derivatives for the AD-1 airplane are compared. The predictions are based on both wind tunnel and computational results. A final best estimate of derivatives is presented