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on Law and Economics |
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Issue of 2023‒07‒10
nine papers chosen by |
| By: | Johanna Lacoe; Brett Fischer; Steven Raphael |
| Abstract: | Low-income individuals arrested on criminal charges face disproportionately high rates of pretrial detention and conviction. We study a novel approach to addressing this inequity: providing low-income individuals with access to legal counsel immediately following their arrest. Focusing on a pilot program in a large urban county, we estimate the causal impact of early representation by a public defender on release and case outcomes, leveraging quasi-random variation in access to counsel pre-arraignment. Low-income individuals who met with a public defender shortly after arrest were 28 percentage points more likely to be released pretrial, and 36 percent more likely to see their cases dismissed, relative to otherwise similar individuals who would first meet with a public defender at their arraignment. These results suggest that providing timely access to legal representation could improve release and case outcomes for public defender clients. |
| JEL: | K40 K42 |
| Date: | 2023–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:31289&r=law |
| By: | Marco Botta; Pier Luigi Parcu; Giorgio Monti |
| Abstract: | This working paper includes a collection of case notes written by those national judges who attended the European Networking and Training for National Competition Enforcers (ENTraNCE Judges2021). The training programme was organised by RSCAS between November 2020 and October 2021, with the financial contribution of the DG Competition of the European Commission. The case notes included in the working paper summarise judgments from different EU Member States that relate to diverse aspects of competition law enforcement. This working paper thus aims to increase the understanding of the challenges that are faced by the national judiciaries in enforcing national and EU competition in the context of the decentralised regime of competition law enforcement that was introduced by Reg. 1/2003. |
| Keywords: | Competition law, Article 101 TFEU, Article 102 TFEU, Reg. 1/2003, judicial training, national judges |
| Date: | 2022–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rsc:rsceui:2022/58&r=law |
| By: | Julia M. Puaschunder (Columbia University, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, USA) |
| Abstract: | International Law historically stems from a collection of international rules and principles to regulate international conduct of nation states towards another. The International Law Commission (ILC) is a gremium of international law experts voted by the United Nations in order to help develop the theory, codification and practice of international law and its wider range into legal diplomacy. The ILC discusses and debates emerging topics of relevance in international law in the pursuit of developing international legal principles and setting out global standards of nation state conduct towards another. A contemporary effort of the International Law Commission is the scientific investigation of the gap between law-in-books and law-in-action. Law-in-books describes all written-down laws, regulations and written legal customs. Contrary to legal writing in law, treaties, statues and cases, law-in-action is a legal theory that examines the role of law how it is actually applied and practiced in society. Law-in-action scholars often draw from observations about the actual behavior exhibited by executives in legal institutions, courts and jurisprudence officials. Law-in-action is also concerned with the effect of laws on actual people in the real world as well as the impact of legal frameworks and societal interpretations of the rule-of-law. The noticed gap between the law as written in books and the law in reality is currently subject to scrutiny by the current ILC in the quest to derive insights about successful environments to help improve efficiency in legal conduct, stability in international law making as well as combat societally-harmful discrepancies, e.g., such as corruption but also human decision making fallibility and preference reversals. In this fairly novel endeavor of the ILC, the wealth of insights derived from the behavioral economics revolution that undermined the neoclassical economic rational choice theory could be tapped into. International Law scholars may derive inferences from the history, methods and applied behavioral insights how to close the gap between stylized aspirational efficiency goals and actual decision making and actions of real-world people. International law may also benefit from the newest critique of the macroeconomic efficiency maximization in the behavioral Post-Keynesian opening for the integration of political, societal, environmental and historical facets as influence factors on the success of macroeconomic measures. In all these endeavors, closing the gaps between scientific aspirational goals and legal models with real-world relevant applied law practice and policy outcomes promises to instigate optimality in scientifically-led ways how to legally rule the world but also to help research understand better what actual real-world actors do when being exposed to different legal choice architectures and policy frameworks. |
| Keywords: | Behavioral Economics, Behavioral International Law, Behavioral Macroeconomics, Behavioral Law and Economics, Choice, Impact, International Law Commission, Economics |
| Date: | 2022–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smo:raiswp:0184&r=law |
| By: | Gérard Mondello (Université Côte d'Azur, France; GREDEG CNRS) |
| Abstract: | This article analyzes Coase's notion of "legal rights" in "The Social Cost Problem" and focuses on the part devoted to zero transaction costs. "Legal rights" cover different types of civil rights that Coase groups together in a common understanding in order to facilitate transactions between agents. This article reintroduces the specificity of civil rights in the theoretical examples and case law analyzed by Coase. As a result, neither the effectiveness nor the invariance of Coase's theorem can be proved any more. |
| Keywords: | Legal rights, property rights, Coase, Social Cost, Case law, Coase theorem |
| JEL: | D62 K13 K23 K32 Q52 Q58 |
| Date: | 2023–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gre:wpaper:2023-04&r=law |
| By: | Oscar Borgogno (Bank of Italy) |
| Abstract: | Decentralized Autonomous Organisations (DAOs) can be understood as collective organizations that are run through blockchain-based smart contracts, which allow token holders to participate directly in decision-making processes. By harnessing the key features of distributed ledger technology (DLT), they are increasingly posing tricky questions for policy makers, supervisors, and legal scholars. Even though DAOs are often claimed to be beyond the reach of national jurisdictions, it is clear that a broad array of legal issues need to be solved for DAOs to achieve scalability and widespread application, namely the lack of limitation of liability, governance concerns, and the definition of token-holders’ rights. Our paper delves into these concerns and argues that DAOs can benefit from the solutions provided by corporate law over the past decades in coping with management and moral hazard problems involving all complex organizations. |
| Keywords: | blockchain, DAOs, decentralization, corporate governance, tokens |
| JEL: | K22 L22 G34 |
| Date: | 2022–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_718_22&r=law |
| By: | Yassine Lefouili (Toulouse School of Economics); Leonardo Madio (University of Padova Author-Name: Ying Lei Toh; Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City) |
| Abstract: | We analyze how a privacy regulation setting a cap on information disclosure affects quality-enhancing innovation incentives by a monopolist — who derives revenues solely from disclosing user data to third parties — and consumer surplus. If the share of privacy-concerned users is sufficiently small, privacy regulation has a negative effect on innovation and may harm users. However, if the share of privacy-concerned users is sufficiently large, privacy regulation has a positive effect on innovation. In this case, there is no trade-off between privacy and innovation and users always benefit from privacy regulation. |
| Keywords: | Privacy Regulation; Data Disclosure; Innovation. |
| Date: | 2023–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pad:wpaper:0298&r=law |
| By: | Gunadi, Christian |
| Abstract: | The provision of healthcare in the United States is increasingly more reliant on immigrant workers. In this paper, I examine the impact of Secure Communities, a major immigration enforcement program that was designed to check the immigration status of all individuals arrested by local police, on staffing in nursing homes. Using difference-in-differences strategy that exploits staggered activation of Secure Communities across U.S counties, I found that the program reduced direct-care staff hours per resident day by 0.082, an approximately 2.2% decline relative to the mean of treatment counties in the baseline period. This finding suggests that stringent immigration enforcement may exacerbate the healthcare worker shortage in the United States. |
| Keywords: | Staffing, Nursing Homes, Secure Communities, Immigration |
| JEL: | K37 J61 I11 J2 J15 |
| Date: | 2023 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:1286&r=law |
| By: | Arandjelović, Ognjen |
| Abstract: | Incarceration remains the foremost form of sentence for serious crimes in Western democracies. At the same time, the management of prisons and of the prison population has become a major real-world challenge, with growing concerns about overcrowding, the offenders' well-being, and the failure of achieving the distal desideratum of reduced criminality, all of which have a moral dimension. In no small part motivated by these practical problems, the focus of the present article is on the ethical framework which we use in thinking about and administering criminal justice. I start with an analysis of imprisonment and its permissibility as a punitive tool of justice. In particular, I present a novel argument against punitive imprisonment, showing it to fall short in meeting two key criteria of just punishment, namely (i) that the appropriate individual is being punished, and (ii) that the punishment can be adequately moderated to reflect the seriousness of the crime. The principles I argue for and which the aforementioned analysis brings to the fore, rooted in the sentient experience, firstly of victims, and not only of victims but also of the offenders as well as the society at large, then lead me to elucidate the broader framework of jurisprudence which I then apply more widely. Hence, while rejecting punitive imprisonment, I use its identified shortcomings to argue for the reinstitution of forms of punishment which are, incongruently, presently not seen as permissible, such as corporal punishment and punishments dismissed on the basis of being seen as humiliating. I also present a novel view of capital punishment which, in contradiction to its name, I reject for punitive aims, but which I argue is permissible on compassionate grounds. |
| Date: | 2023–05–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:osfxxx:jsxcf&r=law |
| By: | Marialuisa Cugno (Ministry of Justice); Silvia Giacomelli (Bank of Italy); Laura Malgieri (Ministry of Justice); Sauro Mocetti (Bank of Italy); Giuliana Palumbo (Ministry of Justice) |
| Abstract: | Based on the new data available, the paper (i) provides a more detailed assessment of the performance of civil courts than in the past and (ii) examines the territorial gaps and the role of supply and demand factors in explaining the heterogeneities observed. The analysis confirms significant differences in the length of the proceedings, in particular between the South and the Center-North of Italy. The supply and demand factors considered account for more than half of these differences. Courts where proceedings last longer on average (and where there is a greater number of pending proceedings) are characterized by low productivity, in some cases, and, in others, by an imbalance between human resources and workflows, suggesting the need to tailor policy interventions to the different situations of the courts. Conversely, no differences are observed between these two macro regions in the appeal and reform rates of judgments and there is no correlation between these variables and the length of the proceedings, suggesting the absence of trade-offs between speed of proceedings and accuracy and stability of judgements. |
| Keywords: | civil justice, length of civil proceedings, appeal rate, litigation rate, productivity, human resources, digitalization, courts |
| JEL: | K4 |
| Date: | 2022–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_715_22&r=law |