Welcome!

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I'm a professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. I use the tools of economics to explain a wide variety of subjects, including law (torts, contracts, takings, litigation, and the good Samaritan rule), democratic politics (candidates, voters, pressure groups, and legislatures), international relations (war, the size of nations, and arms control verification), purely economic topics (contests and mechanism design) and an assortment of unrelated topics (sports rules, theocracy, and family dynamics).

My latest books are The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy, which I co-edited with Barry Weingast, and Economic Foundations of Law and Organization. Here is a list of all my publications.

Curriculum Vitae

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Contact Info

Donald Wittman
Professor of Economics
Engineering 2
University of California Santa Cruz
Santa Cruz, CA 95064

831.459.4445
wittman@ucsc.edu
http://people.ucsc.edu/~wittman/

Employment
1980- University of California, Santa Cruz, Professor of Economics
1976-80 University of California, Santa Cruz, Associate Professor of Economics
1974-76 University of Chicago, Assistant Professor of Political Science
1969-74 University of California, Santa Cruz, Assistant Professor of Economics
1968-69 University of California, Berkeley, Lecturer

Education
1970 University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D.
1966 University of California, Berkeley, M.A.
1964 University of Michigan, B.A.
1962-63 University College, London

NSF Funding
1979-82 "The Economic Analysis of Legal Rules and the Issues of Timing and Compensation." National Science Foundation
1982-84 "Econometric Studies of Civil Trials and Arbitration Settlements." National Science Foundation
1993-95 "Development of Applied EconomicsLaboratory Courses." with Daniel Friedman. National Science Foundation

Editorial Board
1997 Economics of Governance

Classes & Lectures

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Classes
ECONOMICS 104: Applied Econometrics Lab
ECONOMICS 113: Introductory Econometrics
ECONOMICS 115: Management Science
ECONOMICS 169: Economic Analysis of Law
ECONOMICS 204A: Graduate Microtheory A
ECONOMICS 204C: Graduate Microtheory C

Lectures
An Introduction to Statistical Reasoning
Management Science
Laboratory in Applied Econometrics
A Guidebook to Graduate Microtheory

Publications

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Books & Monographs

1. Oxford Handbook of Political Economy, Co-edited with Barry Weingast, Oxford University Press, 2006.

Translation into Chinese (forthcoming)
2. Economic Foundations of Law and Organization, Cambridge University Press, 2006.
3. Readings in the Economic Analysis of Law, Blackwell, 2003.
Translated into Chinese by Li Su, 2006, Law Press China
4. The Myth of Democratic Failure: Why Political Institutions are Efficient, University of Chicago Press, 1995.
"American Political Science Association: Best Book or Article in Political Economy - 1994, 1995 or 1996"
Translated into Portuguese by Alvaro de Sa and Renata Eugenia Alves de Lima. O Mito do Fracasso da Democracia, Bertrand Brasil, 1999.
Translated into Japanese by Katsuyoshi Okui 2003
5. The Federalist Papers: The New lnstitutionalism and the Old, co-edited with B. Grofman, Agathon Press, 1989

Articles in Journals

1. "How pressure groups activate voters and move candidates closer to the median" Economic Journal 2009

2. "Bargaining in the shadow of war: when is a peaceful resolution most likely?" American Journal of Political Science 53:588-602, 2009

3. "Is Status-quo bias consistent with downward sloping demand curves?" Economic Inquiry 46: 283-288, 2008.

4. "Targeted information and strategic behavior by uninformed voters" Economics of Governance 9:87-100. 2008.

5. "Candidate quality, pressure group endorsements and the nature of political advertising" European Journal of Political Economy, 23: 360-378, 2007.
6. "Litigation with two-sided incomplete information and symmetric bargaining" Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 23: 98-126, 2007
7. "The Power and the glory of the median voter: Reply to Caplan" Economic Journal Watch, 2005.
8. "On the methodology of testing for voter irrationality: A response to 'From Friedman to Wittman'" Economic Journal Watch, 2005.
9. "The Internal Organization of the Family: Economic Analysis and Psychological Advice" Kyklos, 2005
10. " Valence Characteristics, Costly Policy and the Median-Crossing Property: A Diagrammatic Exposition" Public Choice, 2005
11. "Lay Juries, Professional Arbitrators and the Arbitrator Selection Hypothesis," American Law and Economic Review, 2003 (abstract)
12. "Implementation with Partial Verification," with Nirvikar Singh, Review of Economic Design, 63-84 (2001) (abstract)
13. "Contests Where There is Variation in the Size of Effort," with Nirvikar Singh, Economic Theory, 711-744 (2001). (abstract)
14. "The Size and Wealth of Nations," Journal of Conflict Resolution, 868-884 (2000). (abstract)
15. "Learning Liability Rules," with D. Friedman, S. Crevier and A. Braskin, Journal of Legal Studies,145-164 (1997) (abstract)
16. "Why Voters Vote for Incumbents but Against Incumbency: A Rational Choice Explanation," with D. Friedman, Journal of Public Economics, 67-83 (1995) (abstract)
17. "Nash Equilibrium vs. Maximin: A Comparative Game Statics Analysis," European Journal of Political Economy, (1993)

Reprinted in Donald A Walker (Ed.) Equilibrium, Edgar Elgar Publishers, 2000.
18. "Nations and States: Mergers and Acquisitions; Dissolutions and Divorce," American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings (1991)

Forthcoming translation into Chinese.
19. "Arms Control and other Games Involving Imperfect Detection," American Political Science Review, 923-948 (1989)
20. "Why Democracies are Efficient," Journal of Political Economy, 1395-1424 (1989). Reprinted in C. Rowley (ed.) Public Choice Theory, Edward Elgar Publisher (1993)
21. "Pressure Group Size and the Politics of Income Redistribution," Social Choice and Welfare, 275-286 (1989)
22. "Dispute Resolution and the Selection of Cases for Trial: A Study of the Generation of Biased and Unbiased Data," Journal of Legal Studies,313-352 (1988).
23. "Economic Contests with Incomplete Information and Optimal Contest Design," with Nirvikar Singh, 34 Management Science,528-540 (1988).
24. "Final Offer Arbitration," Management Science, 1551-1561 (1986).
25. "The Price of Negligence," Journal of Law and Economics, 151-163 (1986).
26. "Counter-intuitive Results in Game Theory," European Journal of Political Economy, 77-89 (1985)
27. "Should Compensation be Based on Cost or Benefit?" International Journal of Law and Economics, 173-185 (1985).
28. "Pigovian Taxes which Work in the Small Number Case," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 144-154 (1985).
29 "Multicandidate Equilibria," Public Choice, 287-291 (1985).
30. "Is the Selection of Cases for Trial Biased?" Journal of Legal Studies, 185-214 (1985).
31. "The Geometry of Justice," Theory and Decision, 239-250 (1984).
32. "Nonmyopic Equilibria in 2x2 Games," with S. Brams, Journal of Conflict Management and Peace Science, 39-62 (1984).
33. "Liability for Harm or Restitution for Benefit?" Journal of Legal Studies, 57-80 (1984).
34. "Candidate Motivation: A Synthesis," American Political Science Review, 142-157 (1983).
35. "A Comparison of Regulation and Liability Rules Under Imperfect Information," with M. White, Journal of Legal Studies, 413-426 (1983).
Reprinted in Kathleen Segerson (ed.) Economics and Liability for Environmental Problems, Ashgate Publishing, 2
36. "The Peak Income Hypothesis: An Econometric Reinvestigation' Review of Economics and Statistics, 357-360 (1983)
37. "Pollution Taxes and Optimal Spatial Location," with M. White, Economica, 297-311 (1983).
38. "Efficient Rules of Thumb in Highway Safety and Sporting Activity," American Economic Review, 78-90 (1982)
Reprinted in Donald Wittman (ed.) Readings in the Economic Analysis of Law, Blackwell, 2003.
39. "Optimal Pricing of Sequential Inputs: Last Clear Chance, Mitigation of Damages and Related Doctrines in the Law," Journal of Legal Studies, 65-91 (1981)
40. "Optimal Spatial Location Under Pollution: Liability Rules and Zoning," with M. White, Journal of Legal Studies, 249-268 (1981).
41. "First Come, First Served: An Economic Analysis of Coming to the Nuisance," Journal of Legal Studies, 557-568 (1980).
42. "A Diagrammatic Exposition of Justice," Theory and Decision, 207-237 (1979).
43. "How a War Ends," Journal of Conflict Resolution, 743-763 (1979).
Reprinted in Keith Hartley and Todd Sandler (eds.) Economics of Conflict, Elgar (2003)
44. "Candidates with Policy Preferences: A Dynamic Model," Journal of Economic Theory, 180-189 (1977).
45. "Prior Regulation vs. Post Liability: The Choice Between Input and Output Monitoring," Journal of Legal Studies, 193-211 (1977).
46. "Estimating Voter Participation," by D. Ashenfelter and S. Kelley, comment, Journal of Law and Economics, 735-741 (1976).
47. "The Politics of Medical Inflation," (with T. Marmor and T. Heagy), Journal of Health Politics and Law, (1976).

Reprinted in Ingerborg Mauksch (ed.), National Health Insurance, (1979).
Reprinted in Theodore Marmor, Jon Christianson, Health Care Policy: A Political Economy Approach, Sage, (1982).
48. "Various Concepts of Power: Equivalence Among Ostensibly Unrelated Approaches," British Journal of Political Science,229-462 (1976)
49. "Punishment as Retribution," Theory and Decision, 209-237 (1974).
50. "Two Views of Procedure," Journal of Legal Studies, 249-256 (1974).
51. "Optimal Cheating and Control," with C. Nichols, Public Choice, (1973).
52. "Parties as Utility Maximizers," American Political Science Review, 490-498 (1973).
Translated into Spanish, "Los Partidos, Como Maximizadores de Utilidad" in Joaquin Vleasco del Mazo (ed.), Democracia y Economia Politica, Instituto de Estudios Fiscales, Madrid, 1980.

Chapters in Books

1. "The end of special interests theory and the beginning of a more positive view of dempcratic politics" in E. Balleisen and D. Moss (eds.) Toward a New Theory of Regulation, 2010.

2."Theocracy and the evolution of morals" in Wintrobe and Ferrero (eds.) The Political Economy of Theocracy, 2008.

3. The power to propose versus the power to oppose." In Braham and Steffan (eds) Power, Freedom and Voting, 2008

4. "Hobbes and the Political Economy of Power." In Josselin and Marciano (eds.) Democracy, Freedom and Coercion, 2007.
5. "The Reach of Political Economy" with Barry Weingast in Weingast and Wittman (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy, 2006.

Reprinted in Robert Goodin (ed.) Handbook of Political Science. Oxford. 2009.
6. "Pressure Groups and Uninformed Voters," Encyclopedia of Public Choice, Charles Rowley and Fritz Schneider (eds.) Kluwer, 2004.
7. "Efficiency of Democracy," Encyclopedia of Public Choice, Charles Rowley and Fritz Schneider (eds.) Kluwer, 2004.
8. "Public Finance without Guilt: Why Normative Public Finance is Positive Public Finance: in Political Economy and Public Finance, Stanley Winer and Hirofumi Shibata (eds.) Edgar Elgar, 2003.
9. "Comment on William Niskanen, 'On the origin and identification of government failure'," in Political Economy and Public Finance, Stanley Winer and Hirofumi Shibata (eds.) Edgar Elgar, 2003.
10. "When does Altruism Overcome the Intransitivity of Income Distribution?" in Rational Foundations of Democratic Politics, Albert Breton et. al. (eds.) Cambridge University Press, 2003.
11. "General Structure of the Law" in Encyclopedia of Law and Economics, Edward Elgar Press, 2000
12. "Political Parties, Pressure Groups,and Democracy: A Transaction Cost Theory of Political Institutions" Samuel Bowles, Maurizio Franzini and Ugo Pagano (eds.) The Politics and Economics of Power. Routledge, 1999.
13. "Contest Design and the Objective of the Contest Designer," co-authored with Nirvikar Singh in M. Baye (ed.) Advances in Applied Microeconomics, Volume 7, Greenwich, CT, 1998.
14. "Last Clear Chance" in The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the Law, Macmillan, 1998.
15."Coming to the Nuisance" in The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the Law, Macmillan, 1998
Reprinted in Donald Wittman (ed.) Readings in the Economic Analysis of Law, Blackwell, 2003.
16. "The Good Samaritan Rule" in The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the Law, Macmillan, 1998
17. "Liability for Harm versus Restitution for Benefit" in The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the Law, Macmillan, 1998
18. "Term Limits as Political Redistribution" with Daniel Friedman in Bernard Grofman (ed.) Legislative Term Limits: A Public Choice Perspective, Kluwer (1996)
19. "Contrasting Economic and Psychological Analyses of Political Choice: An Economist's Perspective on Why Cognitive Psychology does not Explain Democratic Politics" in Kristen Monroe (ed.) The Economic Approach to Politics, Harper Collins (1991)
20. "Spatial Strategies when Candidates have Policy Preferences," in J. Enelow and M. Hinich (eds.) Readings in the Spatial Theory of Voting, Cambridge University Press (1990)
21. "An Economic Analysis of the Federalist Papers: The Constitution as an Optimal SocialContract," in B. Grofman and D. Wittman (eds.) The Federalist Papers: The New Institutionalism and the Old, Agathon Press, 1989.
22. "Elections with N Voters, M Candidates and K Issues," in M. Holler (ed.) The Logic of Multiparty Systems Kluwer (1987)
23. "Markets as Poolers of Information," in Bernard Grofman and G. Owen (eds.) Information Pooling and Group Decision Making, JAI press, 1986
24. "A Priori Probabilities of Coalition Formation and Power Measurement," in Manfred Holler, (Ed.) Coalition and Collective Action, Physica-Verlag, 1984.
25. "Zoning May Be No Worse Than its Alternatives," with R. Grieson in R. Grieson, (Ed.), Housing and Urban Economics, Lexington Heath, 1982.
26. "Power in Ideological Space," in M. Holler (ed.), Power, Voting, and Voting Power, Physica-Verlag, 1982.
27. "Equivalent Concepts of Power," in M. Holler (ed.), Power, Voting, and Voting Power, Physica-Verlag, 1982.
28. "Short Run vs. Long Run Solutions to Spatial Externalities," with M. White, in D. Rubenfeld (Ed.), Law and Economics of Local Government, Urban Institute 1980.
29. "Power in Electoral Games," in C.A. Hooker (Ed.), Foundations of Decision Theory, Reidel, 1978.
30. "Politics, Public Policy and Medical Inflation," in Michael Zubkoff (ed.), Health Care Inflation, with T. Marmor and T. Heagy, Milbank Memorial Fund, 1976.
31. "Political Decision Making," in Robert D. Leiter, Gerald Sirkin (Eds.), Economics of Public Choice, Cyrco Press, 1975.

Book Reviews

1. " The Myth of the Rational Voter?: review in Critical Review, 2008.
2. "Mancur Olson. Power and Prosperity: Outgrowing Communist and Capitalist Dictatorships," review in The Annals of Political and Social Sciences, 2000.
3. "Albert Breton. Competitive Governments," review in Southern Economic Journal, 1998.
4. "William Keech. Economic Politics," review in Governance v 9(2), April 1996, pp 242-4.
5. "Charles Wolf, Jr., Markets or Governments: Choosing between Imperfect Alternatives," review in Public Choice, 1989.
6. "Kenneth Boulding, The Economics of Love and Fear," review in Public Choice, 1974.

Working Papers

1. "Litigation with symmetric bargaining and two-sided incomplete information" (co-authored with Daniel Friedman) (PDF)
2."Pressure Groups and Political Advertising: How uninformed voters can use strategic rules of thumb" (PDF)
3. "Candidate quality, pressure group endorsements, and the nature of political advertising" (PDF)
4. "Lay juries and professional arbitrators and the arbitrator selection hypothesis" (PDF)
5. "Contests where there is variation in the marginal productivity of effort" (co-authored with N. Singh) (PDF)
6. "Implementation with partial verification" (Co-authored with N. Singh) (PDF)
7. "Psychological advice and the internal organization of the family" (PDF)
8. "The size and wealth of nations" (PDF)
9. "Homo Economicus versus Homo Psychologicus: Why cognitive psychology does not explain democratic politics" From Myth of Democratic Failure (PDF)

Research Interests

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My research interests range over law, politics, philosophy, and microeconomics. I have written on democratic institutions, arms control, litigation and dispute resolution, externalities, economic contests, and theories of justice.