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on Law and Economics |
| By: | Stefania Marcassa (EEP-PSE - Ecole d'Économie de Paris - Paris School of Economics - Ecole d'Économie de Paris) |
| Abstract: | At the end of the 1960s, the U.S. divorce laws underwent major changes and the divorce rate more than doubled in all of the states. The new laws introduced unilateral divorce in most of the states and changes in divorce settlements in every state, such as property division, alimony transfers, and child custody assignments. The empirical literature so far has focused on the switch from consensual to unilateral divorce and found that this change cannot fully account for the increase in the divorce rate. Also, the divorce rate increased even in states where the decision remained consensual. In this paper, I consider the effects of other aspects of the legal change. I show that changes in divorce settlements provide economic incentives for both spouses to agree to divorce. Moreover, I describe a mechanism that can explain the different change in divorce rate by age of couples. I solve and calibrate a model where agents differ by gender, and make decisions on their marital status, investment and labor supply. Under the new financial settlements, divorced men gain from a favorable division of property, while women gain from an increase in alimony and child support transfers. Since both of them are better off in the new divorce setting, the existing requirement of consent for divorce (consensual or unilateral) is no longer relevant. Results show that changes in divorce settlements account for a substantial amount of the increase in the aggregate divorce rate. I also find that the increase in divorce rate of young couples with children contributes the most to the overall increase, which is consistent with the data. |
| Keywords: | Age-specific divorce rate, unilateral and consensual divorce, divorce laws, property division, alimony and child support, child custody |
| Date: | 2011–04–26 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:wpaper:halshs-00588693&r=law |
| By: | D'Alessandro, Simone; Fioroni, Tamara |
| Abstract: | This paper focuses on the evolution of child labour, fertility and human capital in an economy with two production sectors and two types of workers endowed with two different levels of human capital. Adults allocate their time endowment between work and child rearing and choose the time allocation of children between schooling and work. The heterogeneity between low and high skilled workers allows for an endogenous analysis of inequality generated by child labour. We show that the persistence of child labour can be explained through the competition between children and low-skilled workers. This persistence, in turn, can easily induce an increase in the inequality and an average impoverishment within the country. |
| Keywords: | J13; J24; J82; K31 |
| JEL: | J13 |
| Date: | 2011–04–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:30454&r=law |
| By: | Alberto F. Alesina; Eliana La Ferrara |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes a test of racial bias in capital sentencing based upon patterns of judicial errors in lower courts. We model the behavior of the trial court as minimizing a weighted sum of the probability of sentencing an innocent and that of letting a guilty defendant free. We define racial bias as a situation where the relative weight on the two types of errors is a function of defendant and/or victim race. The key prediction of the model is that if the court is unbiased, ex post the error rate should be independent of the combination of defendant and victim race. We test this prediction using an original dataset that contains the race of the defendant and of the victim(s) for all capital appeals that became final between 1973 and 1995. We find robust evidence of bias against minority defendants who killed white victims: In Direct Appeal and Habeas Corpus the probability of error in these cases is 3 and 9 percentage points higher, respectively, than for minority defendants who killed minority victims. |
| JEL: | K42 |
| Date: | 2011–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:16981&r=law |
| By: | Petra Moser; Paul W. Rhode |
| Abstract: | The Plant Patent Act of 1930 was the first step towards creating property rights for biological innovation: it introduced patent rights for asexually-propagated plants. This paper uses data on plant patents and registrations of new varieties to examine whether the Act encouraged innovation. Nearly half of all plant patents between 1931 and 1970 were for roses. Large commercial nurseries, which began to build mass hybridization programs in the 1940s, accounted for most of these patents, suggesting that the new intellectual property rights may have helped to encourage the development of a commercial rose breeding industry. Data on registrations of newly-created roses, however, yield no evidence of an increase in innovation: less than 20 percent of new roses were patented, European breeders continued to create most new roses, and there was no increase in the number of new varieties per year after 1931. |
| JEL: | K0 N12 O3 O31 O34 Q0 |
| Date: | 2011–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:16983&r=law |