Ticket scalping is inevitable as long as tickets are sold in advance for high demand events at prices set lower than the market clearing level.   Economically speaking, anti-scalping laws are a hindrance to the free market system, but are necessary to promote the public interest.

Advertising exists to provide product information and to eliminate or reduce the cost of search to consumers.  However, by relying on sellers to provide product information, consumers cannot be guaranteed that the information is truthful.  In order to ensure market efficiency, advertising must be regulated to provide proper incentives and truthful information to consumers, and to deter producers from making deceptive product claims.  Throughout the past few decades, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has increased efforts to ensure proper advertising regulations and to promote incentives for effective market transactions.

Currently the medical community is undergoing a medical malpractice crisis.  Medical professionals as well as patienst are suffering from outrageous damage awards which lead to higher medical malpractice and medical insurance premiums.  The problems are cureable but some reforms are necessary.

Technology and the History of Copyright Law by Justin Petertil

This paper will focus on the development of copyright law, a form of intellectual property that protects expression. Copyright law has changed over the years, since it was first introduced, to cover more forms of expression and protect them for longer. These changes have resulted from the development of new technologies for creating, copying and disseminating intellectual property. As forms of expression gain in economic and social value, through greater availability of technologies of reproduction and dissemination, there is an increasing need to protect the original creators rights, in order to produce incentives to invent, and create greater general welfare for the entire society.

AUSTRALIA'S NEGLECTED PEOPLE by Scott Petz

The Mabo II case (1992) which finally recognized the fact that Aboriginals had been present  prior to colonization established the legal notion of Native Title.  Native Title allows Aboriginal groups to make land claims and engage in negotations an effort to acquire "fair" compensation packages for the use of their land.  Native Title although an improvement is flawed.  It does nothing to reconcile the wrong doings of the past, does not always recognize land rights, and land rights when issued only gives them the right to negotiate not the right to the land.

The three branches of the justice system: the police, the prosecutor, and the courts, work to reduce crime by punishing individuals who engage in criminal activity and also provide incentive to others not to commit crimes.  By analyzing how the actions of each branch and how they work to decrease the crime rate the effectiveness of the justice system can be evaluated.  It can be seen that the justice system distributes costs to criminals, and provides a level of incentive not to commit crimes, that is very close to the economic optimum level for society.

The United States is continuing to lose wetland acreage at an increasing rate.  The Federal Government has elected the Army Corps of Engineers to oversee and regulate wetland use.  Made In Detroit, a Michigan based development company, acquired land in the downriver area located in the cities of Gibraltar and Trenton.  This land is along the shore of the Detroit River and includes acreage of what is known as the Humbug Marsh.  Made In Detroit acquired this land with intentions to build some 340 homes and a 9-hole golf course.  The Army Corps of Engineers, however, denied land development in the Humbug Marsh on two different accounts.  This paper is designed to articulate the way in which the law is involved with one particular economically based issue.

 Regarding the current medical malpractice insurance crisis, soaring insurance rates stem from two distinct sources: gross damage awards in courts and the cyclical pattern of mismanaged insurance companies who are, themselves, at fault. The combination of these two sources has spurred a national crisis in which insurance underwriters are dropping clients in order to help mitigate losses, or else charging astronomical premiums, which in turn, are forcing some specialist physicians out of business. Federal legislation is being proposed in an attempt to help regulate the medical insurance industry such that another crisis like this will be avoided.

Michigan should place restrictions on their child labor laws, which would lead to greater achievement allowing students to spend more time on homework and related activities, and less time working.  Children have the rest of their lives to work, therefore they should get the best education possible so they do not have to make minimum wage for the rest of their lives.

Equal opportunity employment has its roots in the ideas expressed by our forefathers in which all people are equal under God.  In order to achieve such a status quo in the United States, the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of our government have all focused on the principles behind what is known as affirmative action. Affirmative action has made some strides towards  making the labor market a equal playing field between African Americans and Caucasians.  However, upon examining the unemployment rates from the beginnings of affirmative actions through today, one finds that African Americans are still far from achieving equality in the labor market.

Carbon dioxide has been implicated as a greenhouse gas; that is, it is one of the gases responsible for global warming.  Because it poses a cost to society that CO2–emitting firms don’t take into account, it is a negative externality.  As with all negative externalities, the deadweight loss due to CO2 emissions should be reduced or eliminated for maximum societal efficiency.  Legal methods that are appropriate for achieving allocative efficiency with carbon dioxide emissions include: regulatory limits, Pigouvian (effluent) taxes, property rights, and tradeable pollution rights.  These approaches have been successful in reducing the deadweight loss associated with SO4 emissions in the past.

The purpose of this paper was to examine the effects minimum wage legislation have on teen unemployment and schooling. In it I discussed the basic concept of a price floor and how it relates to teens; the social loss is not that large but the overall effect it has on teens is greater than that of most groups.

My paper deals with the topic of Investor/Client Relations and how they have been affected over the last several years by the various scandals.  The paper shows how the legal system is integrated into the safeguards for Investors/Clients.    

My paper deals with recent lawsuits against fast food companies, specifically McDonald's, by overweight youths. The youths say that youth-geared advertising and lack of health information regarding the food led them to believe that McDonald's was healthy. If these allegations are proved to be true, McDonald's would be liable for health costs imposed from eating large quantities of their food.

Examining the causes and consequences of skyrocketing medical malpractice claims in the United States.
Medical malpractice claims rise 10% each year, while jury payouts rise at rates twice that of inflation. Moreover, malpractice insurance premiums for doctors have increased 30 to 1000% in the past ten years. What is causing this crisis in medicine, and why aren't liability incentives dealing with the problem effectively? This paper argues that, to the extent that status quo interpretations of ex ante liability are failing to provide an efficient incentive to doctors to practice safe, effective medicine, the malpractice tort rules must be overhauled. However, the $250,000 limit called for by the Bush Administration will likely fail to remedy the underlying problem.

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