Michael Reksulak

Economics and English: Language Growth in Economic Perspective

This article examines systematically the growth of the English language from the year 252 ce through 1985. Using a data set collected from the CD-ROM version of the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, we characterize the time series of new words added to the language, by year, calculate rates of growth and obsolescence, and disaggregate the data by parts of speech. Economic models of language growth over a modern period (1830–1969) are then estimated. We report evidence that language is a “network” good (the number of new English words is negatively related to population and to gross national product), that additions to the language are retarded by government growth, that the stock of words in use is strongly influenced by foreign trade, and that causality runs from economics to neology but not the reverse. Some suggestive evidence on the relative “efficiency” of English also is presented.

Titan Agonistes: The Wealth Effects of the Standard Oil (N.J.) Case

Contrary to conventional thinking about the purposes and effects of antitrust law enforcement, the personal fortune of John D. Rockefeller, Sr., tripled in the wake of the Supreme Court’s May 1911 order dissolving the Standard Oil trust. This paper summarizes alternative explanations for that unexpected outcome, tests them empirically and finds them deficient. Coupled with new evidence confirming that major events related to Rockefeller’s antitrust encounter did not produce statistically significant abnormal returns for the company’s stockholders, we conclude that the market failed to react to news of the trust’s dismantling because investors expected the government’s remedy to prove ineffective.

Checks and Balances at the OK Corral: Restraining Leviathan

The question was, in February of 2008, before the US Supreme Court: Does the convoluted phrasing of the Second Amendment to the Constitution confer an individual or a collective right to “keep and bear” arms?

Your Place in Space: Classroom Experiment on Spatial Location Theory

Abstract The authors detail an urban economics experiment that is easily run in the classroom. The experiment has a flexible design that allows the instructor to explore how congestion, zoning, public transportation, and taxation levels determine the bid–rent function. Heterogeneous agents in the experiment compete for land use using a simple auction mechanism. Using the data that is collected, a bid–rent function is derived, and the experimental treatment is altered over the course of three sessions to uncover core concepts in urban economics. Moreover, this provides a tangible experience that can be used to help undergraduates relate to urban issues such as the steep rent gradient found around many larger colleges and universities.