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on Law and Economics |
| By: | Stefania Basiglio; Alessandra Foresta; Gilberto Turati (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore; Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore) |
| Abstract: | We empirically test the relationship between crime and impatience at the individual level exploiting data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97). Besides providing information on both violent and property crimes, NLSY97 allows to observe dierent behaviors sharing impatience as a common latent factor. We use factor analysis to extract this common factor as a measure for impatience. Estimates from a Logit model suggest a positive association between impatience and crime. This relationship differs across genders: impatience matters for both violent and property crimes for women, while it affects only violent crimes for men. The result is robust to dierent specications of the factor analysis and to controls for risk preferences. Our results bring support to policies aimed at inuencing individual time preferences as an indirect way to combat crime. |
| Keywords: | Time preferences, Impatience, Property crime, Violent crime, NLSY97, factor analysis. |
| JEL: | D99 K42 Z13 |
| Date: | 2021–09 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ctc:serie1:def111&r= |
| By: | Ram Mohan, M.P.; Gupta, Aditya |
| Abstract: | A bankrupt debtor’s ability to escape unprofitable contracts, enshrined in Section 365 of the American Bankruptcy Code, is considered central to a successful reorganisation within Chapter 11. The ambit of this power and the consequence of its application has been the subject of unceasing legal and business controversy. Intellectual property licenses assumed the forefront of this controversy in 1985 when the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that Section 365 includes a unilateral power to rescind an Intellectual Property License. Congress reacted to the Court’s decision by amending Section 365 and legislating specific protections for Intellectual Property Licensees. This paper explores the American jurisprudence on the treatment of intellectual property licenses during bankruptcy and examines them within the insolvency regimes of the United Kingdom and India. The study reveals an important legal deficiency: neither jurisdiction incorporates any explicit protections for Intellectual Property Licenses during bankruptcy. Further, we find no substantive provisions that deal with the treatment of ongoing contracts during Corporate Insolvency Resolution Proceedings in India and Administration in the UK. For India, this raises an important issue relating to the desirability of a resolution professional’s ability to interfere with pre-petition IP licensing agreements. The authors underline the importance of such interference and suggest amendments to the Indian insolvency regime to deal with intellectual property licenses during bankruptcy. |
| Date: | 2021–08–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iim:iimawp:14663&r= |
| By: | Matthieu Belarouci (CREM - Centre de recherche en économie et management - UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université - UR1 - Université de Rennes 1 - UNIV-RENNES - Université de Rennes - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, ANTHROPO-LAB - Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Expérimentale - ICL - Institut Catholique de Lille - UCL - Université catholique de Lille) |
| Abstract: | This paper uses a DEA bad-output framework to assess the efficiency of court settlement activities and examine how efficiency depends on both the characteristics of the conciliators and on institutional factors. The empirical analysis relies on court level data of conciliation activities in French civil magistrate courts between 2010 and 2017. Results show that efficiency is positively related to factors that foster the demand for settlement. More efficient courts are more prone to involving conciliation in the judicial circuit. Finally, the professional background and previous experience of conciliators are positively related to efficiency. |
| Keywords: | Efficiency of justice,conciliation,data envelopment analysis |
| Date: | 2021–01–20 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03355040&r= |
| By: | Cubides Kovacsics, M.I.; Santos, W.; Siegmann, K.A. |
| Abstract: | The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare and exacerbates the existing insecurities of sex workers, a highly stigmatised, often criminalised and economically precarious group of workers. In the Netherlands, sex workers continue to experience different forms of violence despite the occupation’s legalisation, making it a ‘profession in limbo’. This paper therefore seeks to formulate answers to the questions: What are sex workers’ everyday experiences of (in)security? And: How has the COVID-19 pandemic influenced these? Given sex workers’ historical exclusion from policy formulation, we engage with these questions through collaborative research based on semi-structured interviews with sex workers in The Hague. Our analysis reveals a stark mismatch between the insecurities that sex workers’ experience and the concerns enshrined in the regulatory environment. While the municipality’s regulation of the sex industry focuses on sexually transmitted infections (STIs), occupational safety and health issues that sex workers experience also include psychological problems, insufficient hygiene in the workplace and the risk of violent clients. Besides, income insecurity is a key concern for sex workers. The decline in legal workspaces during the past two decades has not translated into higher service rates. Net earnings are further reduced when window operators pass on the risks of illness or damage to sex workers. Furthermore, operators act as powerful gatekeepers of access to remunerative employment. Here, sex workers identify gender-based discrimination with resulting more severe employment and income insecurities for transwomen and male sex workers. This legal liminality is enabled not only by the opaque legal status of sex work in the Netherlands, but also by the gendering of official regulation. Our study mirrors research from the Netherlands and beyond that documents sex workers’ widespread exclusion from COVID-19 support packages. Over and beyond this, we find that immigration status intersects with and mediates these exclusionary processes. We conclude that, firstly, to effectively address the insecurities that sex workers experience and fear, regulation needs to shift from its current criminal law and public health focus to a labour approach. Secondly, over and above such decriminalization, policies and civil society actors alike need to address the gender and sexual hierarchies that underpin sex worker stigma as well as migrants’ discrimination which have come out as powerful mediators of sex workers’ insecurities. |
| Keywords: | Biopolitics, collaborative research, gender, insecurities, intersectionality, labour approach, legal liminality, the Netherlands, sex work |
| Date: | 2021–09–29 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ems:euriss:135716&r= |
| By: | Claude Fluet; Thomas Lanzi |
| Abstract: | Two opposed parties seek to infl‡uence an uninformed decision maker. They invest in acquiring information and select what to disclose. The decision maker then adjudicates. We compare this benchmark with a procedure allowing adversarial cross-examination. A cross-examiner tests the opponent in order to persuade the decision maker that the opponent is deceitful. How does the opportunity or threat of cross-examination affect the parties' ’behavior? How does it affect the quality of decision-making? We show that decision-making deteriorates because parties are less likely to acquire information and because cross-examination too often makes the truth appear as falsehood. Next, we consider a form of controlled cross-examination by permitting the cross-examined to be re-examined by his own advocate, i.e., counter-persuasion. More information then reaches the decision maker. Decision-making may or may not improve compared to the benchmark depending on how examination is able to trade off type 1 and 2 errors. |
| Keywords: | : Bayesian persuasion, disclosure game, adversarial, redirect examination, procedural rules. |
| JEL: | C72 D71 D82 D83 K41 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lvl:crrecr:2108&r= |
| By: | Jovanovic, Dragan; Wey, Christian; Zhang, Mengxi |
| Abstract: | This paper argues that it cannot be taken for granted that any merger that raises consumer surplus also increases social welfare. We assume a Cournot model with homogeneous goods, linear demand, and constant marginal costs, to show that a merger can raise consumer surplus while harming social welfare. Within this framework, we show that such an outcome depends on two conditions: the merger is between small firms (i.e., relatively inefficient firms) and it reduces concentration; that is, a constellation which can be characterized as a "runner-up" merger. |
| Keywords: | Runner-up Mergers,Efficiencies,Oligopoly,welfare |
| JEL: | K21 L13 L41 |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:dicedp:371&r= |
| By: | Alessandro De Chiara (Department of Economics, Universitat de Barcelona and Barcelona Economic Analysis Team (BEAT), Avinguda Diagonal 696, 08034, Barcelona, Spain.); Ester Manna (Professora Lectora Serra Húnter, Department of Economics, Universitat de Barcelona and Barcelona Economic Analysis Team (BEAT), Avinguda Diagonal 696, 08034, Barcelona, Spain.); Antoni Rubí-Puig (Department of Law, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Ramon Trias Fargas, 25-27, 08005 Barcelona, Spain.); Adrian Segura-Moreiras (Department of Law, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Ramon Trias Fargas, 25-27, 08005 Barcelona, Spain.) |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we build a theoretical model in which an online hosting platform can develop a copyright filter to screen content that contributors wish to upload. The technology is imprecise, since non-infringing material may be incorrectly filtered out. Once the content is hosted on the platform, a right-holder may send a take-down notice if its own automated notice system, also imprecise, finds it to be copyright infringing. We investigate the efficient design of regulation and liability and we find that (i) the right-holder should be given incentives to evaluate fair use when submitting a notice and (ii) the platform should be fined if the take-down to notice ratio is above some predetermined threshold. Such dual system would achieve efficient copyright enforcement without excluding fair-use material. |
| Keywords: | Article 17; Copyright filters; Infringing material; Fair use; Liability rules; Online hosting platforms; Notice and take-down system. |
| JEL: | K2 L51 |
| Date: | 2021–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:net:wpaper:2103&r= |
| By: | bouchoucha, najeh |
| Abstract: | The purpose of this study is to examine the interaction effects of Foreign Direct investment and institutional quality on environmental degradation in 17 Middle East and North African (MENA). We use ordinary least squares (OLS), Fixed effects (FE) random effects (RE) and system generalized method of moments (GMM) for the period 1996–2018. Six dimensions of governance are used : control of corruption, a sound voice and accountability, rule of Law, regulatory Quality, Govenance effectiviness and Political Stability. First, our findings show that FDI increases CO2 emissions in the MENA countries. Second, the effect of FDI on environmental degradation can be ameliorated through the presence of good institutional quality. In fact, FDI accompagnied by good governance could reduce the adverse effects of co2 emissions in MENA countries. Therefore, MENA countries should implement efficiently good institutions that will help to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. |
| Keywords: | FDI, CO2 emissions, institutional quality, GMM Panel, MENA countries. |
| JEL: | K0 |
| Date: | 2021–10–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:110005&r= |
| By: | Bichler, Shimshon; Nitzan, Jonathan |
| Abstract: | This note contextualizes the ongoing U.S. policy shift toward greater ‘regulation’ of large corporations. Cory Doctorow and Blair Fix are optimistic about this shift. We doubt it. |
| Keywords: | capital as power,dominant capital,government,mode of power,policy,regulation,United States |
| JEL: | P16 P26 P48 I18 K2 L |
| Date: | 2021 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:esprep:242968&r= |