Best Selling Books by David Weiss

Someone keeps calling in about mass graves in the hills outside Danston. A drug dealer has gone missing. A slave burying ground that can't be found. A drug epidemic. A troubled toddler who eats only hotdogs. What could they possibly have in common? Burying Ground explores the reach of the past, the limits of knowledge, the mystery of goodness, whether amends can be made and if rules are really meant to be broken.

Trial attorney Skip Maynard, once the rising star of the Cooperstown Courthouse, has been hired to defend Harley Morehead, chairman of the Populist Party. The charge is murder, and the case against Morehead is rock solid. Ever since the hit-and-run driver killed Skip's wife Megan a decade earlier, his career has spiraled downward. Alcohol dominates hours once enthusiastically devoted to law books. With Megan, his soul mate, gone, a new friend, Jack Daniel's, rules Skip's life. Even if he could stay sober, defending Morehead would be daunting. The arrogant politician seeks to recant a confession admitting he killed Squeaky Grimes. Travel back to the turbulent late 1960's to the sleepy village of Cooperstown, New York, home to baseball's birthplace, and discover whether Skip can resurrect his legal career and life. Can he stand up to the curve balls life has hurled his way? Or will Skip, shackled by alcohol, strike out?

A striking change in American society in the last 40 years has been the decline and delay in marriage. The fraction of young adults who have never been married increased significantly between 1970 and 2000. Idiosyncratic labor income volatility also rose. We establish a quantitatively important link between these facts. If marriage involves consumption commitments, then a rise in income volatility delays marriage. We quantitatively assess this hypothesis vis-à-vis others in the literature. Increased volatility accounts for about 20% of the observed delay in marriage and is strong relative to other mechanisms.

James A. Schmitz documents, in a well-known case study (Journal of Political Economy 113 (2005), 582-625), a dramatic rise in productivity in the American and Canadian iron-ore industry following an increase in competition from Brazil. Prior to the increased competition, the industry was not competitive. Economic profits were divided between business and unions. Schmitz attributes the increase in productivity to a change in work practices in the industry, as old negotiated union work rules were abandoned or modified. This research formalizes a mechanism through which a rise in competition can lead to increased productivity in the iron-ore industry.