The overall goal of this dissertation is to study important questions in public economics. In its three chapters, I look at peak world oil production and its implications for oil prices; cross-country pollution emission rates and implications for institutional quality; and finally, black-white arrest rates and implications for law enforcement discount factors. Each chapter of this dissertation combines new theory with robust empirical work to extend the quantitative frontier of research in public economics. / text

This study develops and empirically tests a model of the determinants of federal spending for crime-fighting policies. An inter-disciplinary approach to building the model is utilized that merges ideas from budgeting, policy analysis and criminology. Four factors hypothesized to impact federal spending for the administration of justice are operationalized as eight variables and tested using ordinary least squares regression analysis on time series data. The factors hypothesized to impact federal spending in this area are economic constraints imposed on government spending, the ideological makeup of Congress and the president, the actual crime rate, and the public's attitude toward crime. Five of the eight variables demonstrated statistical significance at the.10 level or better.