AN ECONOMIC-ANALYSIS OF UNIFORM STATE LAWS

Uniform laws proposed by the National Conference of Commissioners on U niform State Laws (NCCUSL) cover virtually every area of state law. Ye t there is no economic analysis of the NCCUSL's activities. This artic le addresses this gap in the literature by applying economic analysis to evaluate and explain the NCCUSL's activities and their success in s tate legislatures. We find that states efficiently sort between NCCUSL proposals in that they tend to adopt these proposals in which a cost- benefit analysis suggests that uniformity is efficient. Nevertheless, the NCCUSL promulgates many laws in which uniformity is not efficient, and the NCCUSL's influence causes some of these proposals to be adopt ed. Our results suggest that, in many cases, reliance on federal law o r on centralized lawmaking bodies such as the NCCUSL to produce unifor mity may be both unnecessary and perverse.