|
on Law and Economics |
| By: | Garrett, Daniel F.; Dilmé, Francesc |
| Abstract: | Successes of law enforcement in apprehending offenders are often publicized events. Such events have been found to result in temporary reductions in offending, or “residual deterrence”. We provide a theory of residual deterrence which accounts for the incentives of both enforcement officials and potential offenders. We do so by introducing to a standard inspection framework costs that must be incurred to commence enforcement. Such costs in practice include hiring specialized staff, undertaking targeted research and coordinating personnel. We illustrate how our model can be used to address a number of policy questions regarding the optimal design of enforcement authorities. |
| Keywords: | deterrence; reputation; switching costs |
| JEL: | C73 K42 |
| Date: | 2019–07–18 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tse:wpaper:123218&r=all |
| By: | Budzinski, Oliver; Gänßle, Sophia; Kunz-Kaltenhäuser, Philipp |
| Abstract: | The collective sale of football broadcasting rights constitutes a cartel, which, in the European Union, is only allowed if it complies with a number of conditions and obligations, inter alia, partial unbundling and the no-single-buyer rule. These regulations were defined with traditional TV-markets in mind. However, the landscape of audiovisual broadcasting is quickly changing with online streaming services gaining popularity and relevance. This also alters the effects of the conditions and obligations for the centralized marketing arrangements. Partial unbundling may lead to increasing instead of decreasing prices for consumers. Moreover, the combination of partial unbundling and the no-single-buyer rule forces consumers into multiple subscriptions to several streaming services, which increases transaction costs. Consequently, competition authorities need to rethink the conditions and obligations they impose on centralized marketing arrangements in football. We recommend restricting the exclusivity of (live-)broadcasting rights and mandate third-party access to program guide information to redesign the remedies. |
| Keywords: | collective sale of broadcasting rights,sports economics,antitrust,competition policy,centralized marketing,sports and media,football,online media |
| JEL: | K21 L40 L83 L82 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:tuiedp:128&r=all |
| By: | Daniel Dejuán (Banco de España) |
| Abstract: | Investment decisions are generally irreversible and could be affected by holdup problems and opportunism. Thus, investment may need sound enforcement institutions. This paper analyzes firm level data to identify the impact of judicial system efficacy, as representative of the institutional quality, in business investment decisions. More specifically, this research measures the effects of congestion in the Spanish civil (private) jurisdiction at the local level, both when solving ordinary trials and executions (when a judge forces the debtor to pay or to fulfill an obligation) and finds a negative and significant relationship between judicial inefficacy and the gross investment ratio. The effect holds after running several robustness checks. This paper also analyzes the efficacy of the administrative jurisdiction, inspired by the hypothesis of Acemoglu and Johnson (2005), but it does not have a significant impact on investment in our sample. |
| Keywords: | investment decisions, justice, enforcement |
| JEL: | E22 K41 K12 |
| Date: | 2019–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bde:wpaper:1927&r=all |
| By: | Lamoreaux, N.; Philips Sawyer, L. |
| Abstract: | Scholars have long recognized that the states’ authority to charter corporations bolstered their antitrust powers in ways that were not available to the federal government. But they have also argued that the growth of large-scale enterprises operating in national and even international markets forced states to stop prosecuting monopolistic combinations out of fear of doing serious damage to their domestic economies. Our paper has revised this conventional view by focusing attention on the lawsuits that minority shareholders brought against their own companies in state courts of law and equity, especially suits that challenged the anticompetitive use of voting trusts. Historically judges had been reluctant to intervene in corporations’ internal affairs and had displayed a particular wariness of shareholders’ private actions. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, they had begun to revise their views and to see shareholders’ private actions as useful checks on economic concentration. Although the balance between judges’ suspicion of and support for shareholders’ activism shifted back and forth over time, the long-run effect was to make devices like voting trusts unsuitable for the purposes of economic concentration. |
| Date: | 2019–07–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cam:camdae:1962&r=all |
| By: | Rita Maghularia; Silke Uebelmesser |
| Abstract: | The paper analyses the empirical relationship between immigrants and crime using panel data for 391 German administrative districts between 2003 and 2016. Employing different standard panel estimation methods, we show that there is no positive association between the immigrant rate and the crime rate. We assess the robustness of this result by considering the heterogeneity of immigrant groups with respect to gender, age, country of origin and – if applicable – refugee status, and study naturalized immigrants. We also take into account possible spillover effects of immigrants on criminal activities by Germans, omitted variables and spatial correlation. Furthermore, taking advantage of the panel-structure of the data set we employ an instrumental variable approach that deals with the possibly endogenous allocation of immigrants and allows for causal interpretation of the estimates. There is no evidence that immigrants increase crime. |
| Keywords: | immigrants, crime, Germany, panel data, IV approach |
| JEL: | F22 J15 K42 R10 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7696&r=all |
| By: | Neuberger, Doris; Reifner, Udo |
| Abstract: | Usury is a frequent occurrence in consumer credit markets and particularly affects low-income households. Systemic usury exploits poverty by shifting usury into additional products and leveraging usury gains by stringing together individual loan agreements. This paper reviews the economic rationale for usury legislation and on this basis evaluates the European Consumer Credit Directive 2008/48/EC. Systemic usury is a market failure. The most powerful explanations for such failure in consumer credit markets are monopoly power, where the consumer is locked in a bilateral credit relationship, discrimination through risk-based pricing, and negative externalities, where the least solvent borrowers are cross-subsidized by the more solvent ones. Incomplete information of consumers cannot explain systemic usury in credit markets, because even fully informed consumers would be discriminated and trapped into a situation of bilateral monopoly. However, the European Consumer Credit Directive is primarily based on the model of incomplete information, which it seeks to correct by informational duties. As a consequence, usurious practices and products are implicitly acknowledged as legal, which has eroded the national combat against usury. Therefore, this Directive is not effective and must be reformed. |
| Keywords: | discrimination,Consumer Credit Directive,incomplete information,payment protection insurance,overindebtedness,monopoly power,responsible lending,risk-based pricing,usury |
| JEL: | D14 D18 D42 D62 D63 G21 G28 K22 K33 L12 L14 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:roswps:161&r=all |
| By: | Sserunjogi, Brian; Lakuma, Corti Paul |
| Abstract: | The study analyzed how court actions particularly with respect to the operation of the Tax Appeals Tribunal (TAT), affect domestic revenue mobilisation in Uganda. Based on time series data combined with stakeholder analysis, the study aimed to analyze the performance of TAT in settling tax disputes, examine the source of tax disputes, identify legal and non-legal factors affecting dispute resolution, and propose policy options for improving the operations of TAT. The results revealed that tax disputes are resolved slowly, resulting into a large back log of outstanding disputes, very few cases are resolved by the High Court due to the back log of cases appearing in the this Court. Moreover, tax disputes are commonly settled through mutual consent or withdrawn by taxpayers due to lengthy legal bureaucracy. Disputes generally arise out of tax exemptions and excessive or aggressive assessments by the Uganda Revenue Authority. The study recommends introduction of mediation as a dispute resolution mechanism, limiting the frequency of amendments of tax laws as this contributes to undue complexity and expanding the jurisdiction of the tribunal to allow the awarding of damages to injured parties. |
| Keywords: | Consumer/Household Economics, Financial Economics, Political Economy |
| Date: | 2019–03–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ags:eprcrs:291793&r=all |
| By: | Wrase, Michael |
| Abstract: | The fundamental right to gender equality has played an important role in Germany's more recent constitutional history. The rulings of the Federal Constitutional Court (FCC, Bundesverfassungsgericht) and other courts have developed doctrinal standards that are relevant to anti-discrimination legislation overall. This article provides a brief history of gender equality in the German Basic Law (Grundgesetz) and its concretization in key Constitutional Court decisions from 1949 until today. A special emphasis is on the legal doctrine of non-discrimination and on the influence of feminist legal scholars. The article concludes with a discussion of affirmative action measures from the perspective of constitutional law. |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:wzbpre:p2019005&r=all |
| By: | Kamalow, Raffael (University of Hamburg); Siedler, Thomas (University of Hamburg) |
| Abstract: | This study investigates the short-term mortality effects of two age-based restrictions on legal access to alcohol in Germany. We exploit sharp differences in legal access to alcohol at 16 and 18 years by implementing a regression discontinuity design. We find discontinuous increases in deaths at both age cutoffs, which are mainly driven by a "novice driver effect", whereas legal access to alcohol plays a marginal role at most. Overall, our results indicate that a stepwise introduction to alcohol has, at most, a minor impact on drunk driving and mortality at age 16 and 18 years. This study thus provides fresh impetus to the ongoing debate on the "optimal" MLDA legislation. |
| Keywords: | mortality, motor vehicle fatalities, minimum legal drinking age, regression discontinuity design |
| JEL: | I10 I18 C26 C31 |
| Date: | 2019–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12456&r=all |
| By: | Alfano, Maria Rosaria; Cantabene, Claudia; Silipo, Damiano Bruno |
| Abstract: | We use a unique and unexplored dataset to investigate the determinants and effects of mafia firms in Italy. Mafia may use several tools to expand its firms. However, in this paper, we show that they prefer political corruption to violence to expand mafia firms. In particular, they use the latter more to build up their reputation in new established regions. Mafia firms hamper entrepreneurial activity but they can have beneficial effects on unemployment if mafia firms add to not substitute current economic activities. Policy makers should take account of this twofold effects of mafia firms. |
| Keywords: | Organized crime,Mafia firm,Mafia and development |
| JEL: | D02 K14 L11 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:esprep:200255&r=all |
| By: | Brown, Austin PhD; Fuller, Sam; Gregory, Jack |
| Abstract: | How, and how effectively, different electric vehicle (EV) related policies will work is an immediate and important question for California as the state updates its EV policies. Adding urgency, Assembly Bill (AB) 615, which was signed by the Governor, requires the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to produce a report by December 2018 on related topics, in consultation with the University of California Institute of Transportation Studies (UC ITS). Senate Bill (SB) 498, also signed, also requires CARB reporting with somewhat different but overlapping topics. The need is to define the state of the research on policies to support EV deployment in a manner that is directly usable by California in updating policies. The specific need for CARB is material estimates of these factors (called out in AB 615): "impact of income caps, increased rebates for low-income consumers, and increased outreach on the electric vehicle market, as well as a quantification of emissions reductions attributable to the Clean Vehicle Rebate Project." This white paper is one in a series summarizing recent research findings for the state of California. The topic of the series is evaluating the important components of electric vehicle adoption and its effects. The goals of these white papers are to: 1. Synthesize the best published and on-going research available on each topic; 2. Highlight important research gaps and propose areas for future research; 3. Provide the reader with a framework for understanding the various dimensions of each topic; 4. Make a clear link between research findings and policy implications, if possible; and 5. Be accessible to an informed and interested, but non-technical audience. |
| Keywords: | Social and Behavioral Sciences, Electric vehicles, policy analysis, automobile ownership, market penetration, incentives, emissions, California |
| Date: | 2019–06–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cdl:itsdav:qt28x636nr&r=all |
| By: | Wei Cui; Nigar Hashimzade |
| Abstract: | In 2018, the European Council and the UK and Spanish governments each proposed to introduce a Digital Services Tax (DST), to be levied on the revenue of large digital platforms from advertising, online intermediation, and/or the transmission of data. We offer a rationalization of the DST as a tax on location-specific rent (LSR). That is, just as many countries already levy royalties on rent from extracting natural resources, one can think of the DST as levied on rent earned by digital platforms from particular locations. We provide stylized illustrations of how platform rent can be assigned to specific locations, even when users from multiple jurisdictions participate. We then elaborate the analogy between the DST and resource royalties, and analyze the DST’s incidence and effect on consumer welfare using a simple model. Finally, we argue that the DST suggests useful directions for redesigning international taxation in the age of labor-replacing AI technology. |
| Keywords: | digital services tax, international taxation, location-specific rent, digital platforms |
| JEL: | H25 K34 M37 M48 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_7737&r=all |
| By: | Alexis Bogroff (University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne); Dominique Guégan (University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne; labEx ReFi France; University Ca’ Foscari Venice) |
| Abstract: | An extensive list of risks relative to big data frameworks and their use through models of artificial intelligence is provided along with measurements and implementable solutions. Bias, interpretability and ethics are studied in depth, with several interpretations from the point of view of developers, companies and regulators. Reflexions suggest that fragmented frameworks increase the risks of models misspecification, opacity and bias in the result. Domain experts and statisticians need to be involved in the whole process as the business objective must drive each decision from the data extraction step to the final activatable prediction. We propose an holistic and original approach to take into account the risks encountered all along the implementation of systems using artificial intelligence from the choice of the data and the selection of the algorithm, to the decision making. |
| Keywords: | Artificial Intelligence, Bias, Big Data, Ethics, Governance, Interpretability, Regulation, Risk |
| JEL: | C4 C5 C6 C8 D8 G28 G38 K2 |
| Date: | 2019 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ven:wpaper:2019:19&r=all |