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on Law and Economics |
| By: | Camilo A. Cepeda-Francese (El Colegio de México); Aurora A. Ramírez-Álvarez (El Colegio de México) |
| Abstract: | This paper assesses how the adoption of a common-law style model affects crime rates, pre-trial detention, and judicial efficiency measures. We do this in the context of Mexico, where a judicial reform was fully implemented by 2016, both on the state and federal levels. Using a generalized synthetic control group approach (Xu, 2017) and municipality-level administrative data for the years 1997-2012, we find that the reform increased the homicide rate and was accompanied by a reduction in the use of pretrial detention for property crimes and rape, and a more rapid process for some types of crimes. The increase in the homicide rate was, nonetheless, specific to municipalities with established organized crime presence, where we observed a reduction in the capacity to effectively prosecute homicides linked to the reform. Our results describe the difficulties in implementing this kind of reform in developing countries experiencing security crises, and they contribute to the literature linking procedural justice and criminal behavior. |
| Keywords: | Crime, Criminal Justice Reform, Generalized Synthetic Control Group, Latin America |
| JEL: | K14 K40 K41 K42 |
| Date: | 2021–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:emx:ceedoc:2021-06&r= |
| By: | Sonia Bhalotra; Manuel Fernández |
| Abstract: | We estimate the health costs of supply-side barriers to accessing medical care. The setting is Colombia, where citizens have a constitutional right to health care, but insurance companies that manage delivery impose restrictions on access. We use administrative data on judicial claims for health as a proxy for unmet demand. We validate this using the register recording all health service utilization, estimating that a one standard deviation increase in judicial claims is associated with pervasive decreases in utilization rates of between 0.25 and 0.71 standard deviations, including in medical consultations, procedures, hospitalizations and emergency care. These restrictions on access manifest in population health outcomes. We estimate that a one standard deviation increase in judicial claims increases the all-cause mortality rate by between 0.10 and 0.23 standard deviations. Increases in mortality are pervasive across causes, with the largest increase in deaths from certain cancers. They are also pervasive across the age and sex distribution but larger among individuals over the age of fifty and (weakly) among women and the low-income population |
| Keywords: | Health care, health insurance, mortality, right-to-health, litigation, universalhealth-coverage, Colombia |
| JEL: | I11 I13 I18 K4 |
| Date: | 2021–08–24 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000089:019555&r= |
| By: | Chelsea Gray (Metropolitan Police); Kirstine Hansen (Social Research Institute, University College London) |
| Abstract: | On March 23rd 2020, the UK, following close behind a number of other countries went into its first national lockdown in a bid to stop the spread of Covid-19. Boris Johnson told people to stay at home and save lives. But what happens when home isn’t safe? This paper uses data from the Metropolitan Police to examine the impact of the first lockdown on domestic abuse in the 32 boroughs of the London Metropolitan area. Using a before and after approach, and controlling for other factors, we show that domestic abuse crimes rose during lockdown. We find this increase is greater for some crimes and populations than others and is consistent across the whole lockdown period. Once lockdown restrictions are eased, rates decline but remain slightly higher than prior to lockdown up to 3 months later |
| Keywords: | Lockdown, Domestic abuse, victimisation, London |
| JEL: | B41 B55 C01 C12 C25 J12 K42 |
| Date: | 2021–09–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qss:dqsswp:2127&r= |
| By: | Adam Levai (UNIVERSITE CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES)); Riccardo Turati (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona) |
| Abstract: | Even though the existing literature investigating the labor market impact of immigration assumes, implicitly or explicitly, that labor market regulation is exogenous to immigration (in terms of both size and composition), this is not necessarily the case. This paper shows that labor market regulation responds to the composition of the immigrant population. We build a novel workers’ protection index based on 36 labor law variables over a sample of 70 developed and developing countries from 1970 to 2010. Exploiting a dynamic panel setting using both internal and external instruments, we find that workers’ protection in destination countries is influenced by the degree of workers’ protection that immigrants experience in their origin countries and is not affected by immigrant population size. The effects are particularly strong across two dimensions of workers’ protection: worker representation laws and employment forms laws. This paper provides suggestive evidence that immigrants’ participation in unions and its implications for political actors is one of the potential mechanisms. Finally, calculations based on the estimated coefficients suggest that immigration, on average, contributes to a reduction in workers’ protection, particularly in OECD high-income countries. |
| Keywords: | Migration, Labor Market Institutions, Labor Regulation, Workers’ Protection |
| JEL: | J61 K31 F22 |
| Date: | 2021–09–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ctl:louvir:2021021&r= |
| By: | Traverso, Silvio; Vatiero, Massimiliano; Zaninotto, Enrico |
| Abstract: | This work discusses and empirically investigates the relationship between labor regulation and robotization. In particular, the empirical analysis focuses on the relationship between the discipline of workers' dismissal and the adoption of indus- trial robots in nineteen Western countries over the 2006{2016 period. We find that high levels of statutory employment protection have been negatively associated with robot adoption, suggesting that labor-friendly national legislations, by increasing adjustment costs (such as firing costs), and thus making investment riskier, provide less favorable environments for firms to invest in industrial robots. We also find, however, that the correlation is positively mediated by the sectoral levels of capital intensity, a hint that firms do resort to industrial robots as potential substitutes for workers to reduce employees' bargaining power and to limit their hold-up opportu- nities, which tend to be larger in sectors characterized by high levels of operating leverage. |
| Keywords: | Robot adoption,Labor regulation,Hold-up |
| JEL: | K31 O31 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:glodps:928&r= |
| By: | Konstantin A. Kholodilin; Sebastian Kohl; Artem Korzhenevych; Linus Pfeiffer |
| Abstract: | Welfare is traditionally understood through social security decommodifying labor markets or social investment policies. In the domain of housing, however, welfare for homeowners is largely hidden in the tax codes’ fiscal exemptions. Based on a content analysis of legislation, this paper introduces a novel yearly database of 37 countries between 1910 and 2020 to uncover the “hidden welfare state” of taxes on imputed rent, deductibility of mortgage payments, housing capital gains tax and VAT on newly built dwellings. Summary indices of homeownership attractiveness and neutrality of the tax code show that fiscal homeownership policies have been in decline until the 1980s and risen ever since. They are in place where finance is liberally and labor restrictively regulated. Contrary to the classical welfare state, they are not associated with an economic logic of industrialism or left-wing governments, but a rent-regulation alternative of Common-Law jurisdictions and smaller countries. As welfare for property owners, the logic of fiscal homeownership welfare diverges from the classical welfare for the laboring classes. |
| Keywords: | Homeownership taxation attractiveness, tenure neutrality, leximetrics, international longitudinal data |
| JEL: | C43 H24 K25 R38 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp1972&r= |