John J. Donohue III is the C. Wendell and Edith M. Carlsmith Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is an economist/lawyer who has used large-scale statistical studies to estimate the impact of law and public policy in a wide range of areas from civil rights and employment discrimination law to school funding and crime control. Before returning to Stanford Law School for the Fall Term of 2010, Donohue was the Leighton Homer Surbeck Professor of Law at Yale Law School. Prior to going to Yale, he was a chaired professor first at Northwestern Law School and then at Stanford Law School (during his first stint from 1995-2004). He recently co-authored (with George Rutherglen) Employment Discrimination: Law and Theory. Among his major articles are: Uses and Abuses of Empirical Evidence in the Death Penalty Debate (with Justin Wolfers), Shooting Down the ‘More Guns, Less Crime’ Hypothesis (with Ian Ayres), and The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime (with Steven Levitt). Professor Donohue is a graduate of Hamilton College and he received his J.D. from Harvard and a Ph.D. in economics from Yale. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009.
Incarceration
Book Review - When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment, Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) (2010)
Two of the most dramatic social phenomena of the last half century in the United...
Assessing the Relative Benefits of Incarceration: The Overall Change Over the Previous Decades and the Benefits on the Margin, Do Prisions Make Us Safer? The Benefits and Costs of the Prison Boom (2009)
Allocating Resources among Prisons and Social Programs in the Battle against Crime (with Peter Siegleman), The Journal of Legal Studies (1998)
Law and Economics of Civil Procedure
Opting for the British Rule: Or, If Posner and Shavell Can't Remember the Coase Theorem, Who Will?, Harvard Law Review (1991)
The Effects of Fee Shifting on the Settlement Rate: Theoretical Observations on Costs, Conflicts and Contingency Fees, Law and Contemporary Problems (1991)
Medical Malpractice
The Imapct of Damage Caps on Malpractice Claims: Randomization Inference with Difference-in-Differences (with Daniel E. Ho), Journal of Empirical Legal Studies (2007)
Labor and Employment
Assessing Post-ADA Employment: Some Econometric Evidence and Policy Considerations, Journal of Empirical Legal Studies (2011)
In this article, we offer innovative analysis and additional evidence on the relationship between the...
The Costs of Wrongful-Discharge Laws (with David Autor and Stewart Schwab), The Review of Economics and Statistics (2006)
Full data and programs behind the published paper are available from: http://econ-www.mit.edu/faculty/dautor/data/autdonschw06
The Evolution of Employment Discrimination Law in the 1990s: A Preliminary Empirical Investigation (with Peter Siegelman), Handbook of Employment Discrimination Research (2005)
Law and Economics
Some Thoughts on Law and Economics and the Theory of Second Best, Chicago-Kent Law Review (1998)
The Effects of Joint and Several Liability on Settlement Rates: Mathematical Symmetries and Meta-Issues in the Analusis of Rational Litigant Behavior, Journal of Legal Studies (1994)
Law and Politics
The Impact of Right-to-Carry Laws and the NRC Report: Lessons for the Empirical Evaluation of Law and Policy, Am Law Econ Rev (2011)
For over a decade, there has been a spirited academic debate over the impact on...
Clinton and Bush's Report Cards on Crime Reduction: The Data Show Bush Policies Are Undermining Clinton Gains, The Economists' Voice (2006)
At the Democratic Convention Clinton argued that he had put police on the street and...
Law and Society
Abortion and Crime
The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Teen Childbearing (with Jeffrey Grogger and Steven Levitt), American Law and Economics Review (2009)
Further Evidence that Legalized Abortion Lowered Crime: A Reply to Joyce (with Steven D. Levitt), Journal of Human Resources (2004)
The Impact of Legalized Abortion on Crime (with Steven D. Levitt), Quarterly Journal of Economics (2001)
We offer evidence that legalized abortion has contributed significantly to recent crime reductions. Crime began...
Death Penalty
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN CONNECTICUT, 1973-2007: A COMPREHENSIVE EVALUATION FROM 4686 MURDERS TO ONE EXECUTION (2013)
This study explores and evaluates the application of the death penalty in Connecticut from 1973...
John Donohue, When Social Sciences Save Lives, Knowledge - Bocconi University, Italy (2012)
If you think academic work can’t be “emotionally draining”, meet John Donohue, the C. Wendell...
Time To Kill The Death Penalty, National Bureau of Economic Research (2012)
Forty years ago this week, the U.S. Supreme Court in Furman v. Georgia struck down...
Study Shows Scales Of Justice Askew When It Comes To Death Penalty, Courant.com (2012)
A former Yale Law School professor's long-running study now concludes that while extremely rare, the...
The Random Horror of the Death Penalty, New York Times (2012)
The Supreme Court has not banned capital punishment, as it should, but it has long...
Gun Control
What can be done to stem gun violence?, San Francisco Chronicle (2013)
A news report describing the Newtown, Conn., mass shooting as "the unthinkable" seemed off base....
Why the NRA fights background checks, Special to CNN (2013)
"We think it's reasonable to provide mandatory instant criminal background checks for every sale at...
Substance vs. Sideshows in the More Guns, Less Crime Debate: A Comment on Moody, Lott, and Marvell, ECON JOURNAL WATCH (2013)
We are grateful to authors Carlisle Moody, John Lott, and Thomas Marvell (hereafter MLM) for...
When will America wake up to gun violence?, CNN.com (2012)
Last night's shooting rampage at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, was a nightmare. Authorities...
The Impact of Right-to-Carry Laws and the NRC Report: Lessons for the Empirical Evaluation of Law and Policy, Am Law Econ Rev (2011)
For over a decade, there has been a spirited academic debate over the impact on...
Antidiscrimination Law
Assessing Post-ADA Employment: Some Econometric Evidence and Policy Considerationsjels, Journal of Empirical Legal Studies (2011)
This article explores the relationship between the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the relative...
The Legal Response to Discrimination: Does Law Matter?, How Does Law Matter? (2011)
The topic of the legal response to discrimination is broad and growing. It includes everything...
Antidiscrimination Law, Handbook of Law and Economics (2007)
This essay provides an overview of the central theoretical law and economics insights and empirical...
Understanding the Reasons for and Impact of Legislatively Mandated Benefits for Selected Workers, Stanford Law Review (2001)
Crime
Book Review - When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment, Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) (2010)
Two of the most dramatic social phenomena of the last half century in the United...
Murder in Decline in the 1990s: Why the U.S. and N.Y.C. Were Not That Special," Book Review of Frank Zimring's, Punishment and Society (2008)
Understanding the 1990s Crime Drops in the U.S. and Canada, Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice (2007)
There is much to be learned from Frank Zimring’s highly readable and penetrating examination of...
Employment Duration of Young Workers
A Comparison of Male-Female Hazard Rates of Young Workers, 1968-1971, (Working Paper Yale Law School 1986) (1986)
The perception that women have higher turnover rates than men is widespread. A recent study...
Hazard Rates of Young Male and Female Workers--Recent Developments (Working Paper #51), (Working Paper Yale Law School 1986) (1986)
This paper will explore whether this tenure differential has persisted after a decade in which...
Disney v Ovitz
The Discretion of Judges and Corporate Executives: An Insider’s View of the Disney Case, Economists' Voice (2006)
The widely publicized Disney case is perhaps the most important corporate law litigation in many...
Expert Witness Says Disney Had Cause to Fire President, NY Times (2004)
The Walt Disney Company should have fired Michael S. Ovitz because of his "substantial and...
Ovitz Performance In Disney Role Is Faulted at Trial, Wall Street Journal (2004)
Former Walt Disney Co. President Michael Ovitz's job performance and spending habits came under attack...
Disney had good reason to fire Ovitz, USA Today (2004)
GEORGETOWN, Del., Oct 21 (Reuters) - Walt Disney Co. (DIS.N) should have fired Michael Ovitz...
Drug Policy
Controlling Crime: Strategies and Tradeoffs, Rethinking America's Illegal Drug Policy (2011)
The United States stands out among developed nations for both its extremely punitive illegal drug...
Rethink the "War on Drugs", Yale Law Report (2007)
Crime is an issue that often seeps into Presidential elections in one form or another....
Concealed-Carry Laws
The Impact of Concealed-Carry Laws, in Jens Ludwig and Philip Cook, Evaluating Gun Policy: Effects on Crime and Violence (2003)
Thirty-three states have “shall-issue” laws that require law enforcement authorities to issue permits to carry...