Loopholes

Kim Sau Chung*, Lance Fortnow

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

    2 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    We formalise the argument of those American founding fathers who opposed the inclusion of the Bill of Rights into the Constitution. For some parameter values, the legislator, who is not sure whether or not there are any rights that he is unaware of, optimally chooses not to enumerate even those rights that he is aware of. We also show that, even if the legislator can add the sentence ‘this Bill should not be interpreted as suggesting that any unlisted rights can be impaired by the government’ to the Bill, the equilibrium outcome will stay the same.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)1774-1797
    Number of pages24
    JournalEconomic Journal
    Volume126
    Issue number595
    Early online date18 Apr 2015
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Sept 2016

    Scopus Subject Areas

    • Economics and Econometrics

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