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on Law and Economics |
| By: | Daniel Mejía; Ervyn Norza; Santiago Tobón; Martín Vanegas-Arias |
| Abstract: | We study the effects of broken windows policing on crime using geo-located crime and arrest reports for 80 Colombian cities. Broadly defined, broken windows policing consists of intensifying arrests -sometimes for minor offenses- to deter potential criminals. To estimate causal effects, we build grids of 200 × 200 meters over the urban perimeter of all cities and produce event studies to look at the effects of shocks in police activity in the periods to follow. We use spikes in the number of arrests with no warrant -which are more likely associated with unplanned police presence- as a proxy for shocks in broken windows policing. As expected, we observe an increase in crimes during the shock period, as each arrest implies at least one crime report. In the following periods, crimes decrease both in the place of the arrests and the surroundings. With many treated grids and many places exposed to spillovers, these effects add up. On aggregate, the crime reduction offsets the observed increase during the shock period. Direct effects are more immediate and precise at low crime grids, but beneficial spillovers seem more relevant at crime hot spots. The effects of broken windows policing circumscribe to cities with low or moderate organized crime, consistent with criminal organizations planning their activities more systematically than disorganized criminals. |
| Keywords: | crime, violence, police, arrests, spillovers |
| JEL: | K42 O17 E26 J48 C93 |
| Date: | 2022–06–16 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:col:000089:020199&r= |
| By: | Cristina Elena Popa Tache (Institute of Legal Research, Romanian Academy, Bucharest, Romania) |
| Abstract: | Would it be possible to study a legal science of the soul environment or soul phenomena? In the light of legal logic, the customs from ecclesiastical law, natural law, canon law, or human rights could be analyzed. We have highlighted certain peculiarities of the property on the soul and the biofields of life forms, aspects that determine further research especially on the rights with which life forms are born, among which can be regulated the property that can be recognized on the soul and energy, as goods natural and not created by human activity. These rights, which are in fact property rights, remain at the regulatory level, a fundamental problem of the existence of the individual and of society in general. Everything that means the right to property is part of the category of civil rights, along with the fundamental right to life, the right to liberty, the right to equality before the law, all of which are also regulated by treaties. These unwritten rules, which have an important legal value, have been developed and circulated in the practice of social life from generation to generation and thus, this right of the soul and the biofields of life forms already exists globally, de facto, especially in the field of religions and complementary medicine. For the realization of this material, the method of consilience-type introspection was used. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the definition of the term “consilience†is the linking of principles in different disciplines, especially when a comprehensive theory is formed. Wilson’s (1998) book, Consilience, was also a revelation in the same vein. This jump together of specialists in different fields but also of substantially different notions, can offer unified theories, so I practiced and somewhat unpredictably extended to another level Wilson’s desideratum, by combining law with several elements from different subjects (soul, health, energies, nature, animals, history, spirituality, etc.) related to contemporary social reality, to identify the most appropriate scientific solution. |
| Keywords: | legal logic, human rights, custom, soul, bioenergy |
| Date: | 2022–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smo:raiswp:0176&r= |
| By: | Cosmin Butura (Romanian Association of Forensic Sciences, Bucharest, Romania) |
| Abstract: | It is said that each man is his own judge, thus deciding for himself whether he wants to live in freedom or under the sanction of the law. Human acts that are against the norms of social cohabitation led to the development of technical-scientific research called criminal investigations. In this article, I will present the management of a criminal investigation, starting from the phase of the preceding acts to the sentencing phase. The article will be structured in two stages, namely the notions and principles of the criminal investigation organization and the versions of criminal prosecution. In the first stage of the article, the principles of the organization of criminal prosecution that refer to the criminal process's fundamental rules and implicitly the investigation's planning in relation to the specific principles of criminal science will be brought into question. These principles fall into two main categories: individuality and dynamism, aspects that I will develop within the article. In the first stage, I will capitalize on the structure and content of the criminal investigation plan. I will consider the tactical report, the timing of drawing up an investigation plan, the formula of the seven questions, and the formula of the four questions. In the other half of the full table of contents of the article, I will develop the second stage, respectively, the prosecution versions. These versions refer to the classification criteria structured on the main, general, and secondary versions. The tactic of developing the prosecution versions spread over three phases: possession of data, the elaboration of the versions, and their reasoning. Towards the end of the article, I will expose the ways of checking the versions of the criminal investigation. At the end of the article, I will conclude with the technical-scientific tactics of a criminal investigation in relation to the doctrine of criminal law and the specialists concerned. |
| Keywords: | Criminal Law, investigation, tactics, principles, dynamism, versions, science |
| Date: | 2022–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smo:raiswp:0166&r= |
| By: | Nadia Zlate (National Anticorruption Directorate, Romania) |
| Abstract: | Modern society is witnessing remarkable development in many areas due to the advancement of computer science and, in particular, Artificial Intelligence (AI). IA represents “the theory and development of computer systems capable of performing tasks that regularly require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and multilingual translation†. Justice is also an area in which AI brings its contribution in different forms, depending on the legal framework of each state. International bodies are preoccupied that law enforcement agencies adapt to new ways of committing crimes with technological and transnational components and use appropriate means of investigation. Chatbots are intelligent conversational computer systems designed to mimic human conversation to enable automated online guidance and assistance. The increased benefits of chatbots have led to their widespread adoption by many industries to provide virtual customer support. Chatbots use methods and algorithms in two areas of artificial intelligence: Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. Researchers have shown that chatbots can be used as real undercover agents. Thus, they may enter into a conversation with criminals willing to commit certain serious crimes without the latter knowing that they are in fact talking to an intelligent computer system, recording the conversation, the IP of the device used by the suspect and other data that may be stored on a computer system. The chatbot can have a human avatar, but not necessarily, and conversations can take place in a variety of ways: written, spoken, and so on. There is currently widespread discussion about the technological and ethical limitations of the use of AI in criminal justice, and the process of integrating mechanisms involving the use of AI into national law is difficult. |
| Keywords: | artificial intelligence, use of artificial intelligence in justice, chatbots, respect for fundamental human rights |
| Date: | 2022–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smo:raiswp:0174&r= |
| By: | Toke Aidt; Jean Lacroix; Pierre-Guillaume Méon |
| Abstract: | This paper studies a new mechanism that allows political elites from a non-democratic regime to survive a democratic transition: connections. We document this mechanism in the transition from the Vichy regime to democracy in post-World War II France. The parliamentarians who had supported the Vichy regime were purged in a two-stage process where each case was judged twice by two different courts. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, we show that Law graduates, a powerful social group in French politics with strong connections to one of the two courts, had a clearance rate that was 10 percentage points higher than others. This facilitated the persistence of that elite group. A systematic analysis of 17,589 documents from the defendants' dossiers is consistent with the hypothesis that the connections of Law graduates to one of the two courts were a major driver of their ability to avoid the purge. We consider and rule out alternative mechanisms. |
| Keywords: | purges, political transitions, elite persistence, connections |
| JEL: | D73 K40 N44 P48 |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9760&r= |
| By: | Douglas Arner; Ross Buckley; Thomas Lammer; Dirk Zetzsche; Sangita Gazi |
| Abstract: | In October 2020, the G20 endorsed a significant initiative to enhance cross-border payments. Faster, cheaper, more transparent, and more inclusive cross-border payment services will deliver widespread benefits for citizens and economies worldwide, supporting economic growth, international trade, global development, and financial inclusion. Enhancing cross-border payments requires more than mere adoption of technical standards. The best outcome involves aligned technological, regulatory, and legal frameworks. This paper analyzes such payment integration projects. Each border adds to the costs of a cross-border payment if crossing the border means entering into a different technological, regulatory and legal environment, with different systems, regulators, and courts. Under ideal circumstances, cross-border payments will be processed as seamlessly as comparable domestic payments, even where various currencies are processed. While this highly ambitious target is unlikely to be achieved globally in the short to medium term, regionally, the gap between cross-border and domestic payments has already been narrowed. At the global level, mismatches between the inter-institutional framework on the back-end and the contractual relationship with clients on the front-end represent potential costs for the payment services provider and increase legal risk, prompting costly legal, due diligence manual adjustments in payments processes. A high degree of cross-border harmonization via rulebooks along the technological, regulatory, and legal dimensions has been instrumental for successful regional integration projects and has promoted straight-through-processing. Potentially costly events such as rejects, returns, and revocations of payment orders have been reduced, sanction screening and financial crime compliance processes agreed. Drawing on this insight, this paper suggests globally coordinated action to develop a comprehensive framework to guide and support regional payment integration. This we call a "Single Rule Book." Such a Single Rule Book could be instrumental in enhancing safety, efficiency, and integrity in cross-border payments. We explore its potential contents, and importantly, the minimum standards it would impose. |
| Keywords: | payments, cross-border payments, central banks, harmonization of law |
| JEL: | G20 G21 G28 E42 E58 K23 K24 O16 |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bis:biswps:1016&r= |
| By: | Dirk Zetzsche; Linn Anker-Sørensen; Maria Lucia Passador; Andreas Wehrli |
| Abstract: | Financial law and regulation have, to date, assumed that regulated activities and functions are concentrated in a single legal entity responsible and accountable for operations and compliance. Even with regard to financial market infrastructure where the regulatory perspective acknowledges the need for interoperability of many entities as a system, each entity is subject to its own rules and regulations, and can thus meet its own compliance requirements independent of other system participants. The entity-focused regulatory paradigm is under pressure in the world of DLT-based payment arrangements where some ledgers, and thus the performance of the services as such, are distributed. DLT arrangements could provide an alternative to the traditional reliance on a mutually trusted central entity to transfer funds and enable the creation of new foundational infrastructures by distributing technical functions or linking existing systems. As such, we identify and outline concepts for use cases where DLT is potentially improving the efficiency of cross-border payments, namely a Best Execution DLT, a DLT application for a Network of Central Banks, a DLT as an AML/KYC utility, as well as DLT arrangements for an Identity Platform, a Small Payments Platform and, finally, an Interoperability Platform connecting multiple closed-loop and proprietary banking systems. |
| Keywords: | distributed ledgers, blockchain, payments, central banks, cross-border payments, law |
| JEL: | G20 G21 G28 E42 E58 K23 K24 O16 |
| Date: | 2022–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bis:biswps:1015&r= |
| By: | Marilena Marin (Ovidius University of Constanta, Romania); Oana Tataru (Ovidius University of Constanta, Romania) |
| Abstract: | The phrase courtage assumes the role of an infrequent term as regards common and specialized language within legal, linguistic or historic domains as well as other various areas. The conception of “courtage†encompasses the acceptance of “mediation†, whereas the syntagm of “matrimonial courtage†, a collocation or expression that characterizes the argot of the field of family law, is a reference to the mediation being realized via escort services/matrimonial agencies. The string of words at issue does not avail a regulation in point of Romanian legislation, still, if the term is perceived with the meaning of convention/contract, case in which is allowed to the Romanian legislator. The current paper is intended as an analysis with respect to matrimonial courtage in relation with the conduct/behavior of individuals that decide to choose this type of mediation, taking into consideration the integral and comprehensive execution/accomplishment of contractual obligations that are assumed on the part of contractual partners along with the possible corresponding deviations from the rule that might occur. |
| Keywords: | agreement, contract, mediation, courtage, marital/matrimonial courtage, credence |
| Date: | 2022–03 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smo:raiswp:0173&r= |
| By: | Thomas Epper (IÉSEG School Of Management [Puteaux], LEM - Laboratoire d'Economie et de Management - UNS - Université Nice Sophia Antipolis (... - 2019) - COMUE UCA - COMUE Université Côte d'Azur (2015-2019) - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UCA - Université Côte d'Azur, KU - University of Copenhagen = Københavns Universitet); Ernst Fehr (KU - University of Copenhagen = Københavns Universitet); Kristoffer Balle Hvidberg (KU - University of Copenhagen = Københavns Universitet); Claus Thustrup Kreiner (KU - University of Copenhagen = Københavns Universitet); Soren Leth-Petersen (KU - University of Copenhagen = Københavns Universitet); Gregers Nytoft Rasmussen (KU - University of Copenhagen = Københavns Universitet) |
| Abstract: | Understanding who commits crime and why is a key topic in social science and important for the design of crime prevention policy. In theory, people who commit crime face different social and economic incentives for criminal activity than other people, or they evaluate the costs and benefits of crime differently because they have different preferences. Empirical evidence on the role of preferences is scarce. Theoretically, risk-tolerant, impatient, and self-interested people are more prone to commit crime than risk-averse, patient, and altruistic people. We test these predictions with a unique combination of data where we use incentivized experiments to elicit the preferences of young men and link these experimental data to their criminal records. In addition, our data allow us to control extensively for other characteristics such as cognitive skills, socioeconomic background, and self-control problems. We find that preferences are strongly associated with actual criminal behavior. Impatience and, in particular, risk tolerance are still strong predictors when we include the full battery of controls. Crime propensities are 8 to 10 percentage points higher for the most risk-tolerant individuals compared to the most risk averse. This effect is half the size of the effect of cognitive skills, which is known to be a very strong predictor of criminal behavior. Looking into different types of crime, we find that preferences significantly predict property offenses, while self-control problems significantly predict violent, drug, and sexual offenses. |
| Keywords: | crime,risk preference,time preference,self-control,altruism |
| Date: | 2022 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03550163&r= |
| By: | Srivastav, Sugandha; Singh, Tanmay |
| Abstract: | Laws that govern land acquisition can lock in old paradigms. We study one such case: the Coal Bearing Areas Act of 1957 (CBAA) which unlike the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 (LARR) provides minimal social and environmental safeguards. The lack of due diligence processes in the CBAA confers an undue comparative advantage to coal development, a facet of policy that is at odds with India's current stance to phasedown coal use, reduce air pollution, and advance modern, low-carbon energy to achieve net-zero emissions. In the decades since the CBAA was written, the local context has significantly changed: the environmental and social costs of dirty energy are clearer, and low-carbon alternatives are cost competitive. We recommend updating land acquisition laws to bring coal under the general purview of LARR or, at minimum, amending CBAA to ensure adequate environmental and social safeguards are in place, both in letter and practice. |
| Keywords: | coal, land acquisition, net-zero, environmental protection, social impact assessment, rehabilitation and resettlement |
| Date: | 2022–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:amz:wpaper:2022-09&r= |
| By: | Ciprian Raul Romitan (Romanian-American University, Associate Partner SCA “Roș and Associates†, Romania ciprian.romitan@rvsa.ro) |
| Abstract: | At present, in Romania, the main form of child protection is the parental authority, but in some cases, it can also be done through state intervention through its specialized bodies by means of alternative protection measures (by guardianship and special protection measures). Where the minor is temporarily or definitively deprived of the protection of his or her parents or cannot be left in their care, in order to protect his or her interests, the law establishes some special protection measures. In Romania, the legislation on the protection and promotion of the child's rights provides for special protection measures, such as placement, emergency placement and specialized supervision. The study presents and analyzes legal regulations regarding the special protection of the child who is temporarily or permanently deprived of parental protection. |
| Keywords: | minor, parental authority, special protection, placement, emergency placement, specialized supervision |
| Date: | 2021–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smo:lpaper:0150&r= |
| By: | Podlesnaya Alina (Department of Economics, Lomonosov Moscow State University) |
| Abstract: | Electricity market coupling aimed at reducing electricity price differential by optimizing cross-border capacity allocation is the main mechanism of the EU electricity market integration. The paper considers the problem of the abuse of dominance in intraday coupled electricity markets and the consequences of this abuse for the market integration of renewables. The paper found that the abuse of dominance in coupled markets could occur when the owner of essential facilities (i.e. power exchange) prohibits his competitors access to the infrastructure necessary for the intraday coupled auctions (i.e. shared order book). Since intraday coupled auctions combine two main instruments of market integration of renewables, i.e. close to real time trading and optimization of cross-border capacity allocation, distortion of competition in intraday coupled electricity markets can prevent efficient market integration of renewables and the greening of the power industry. |
| Keywords: | market coupling, intraday electricity market, renewables, abuse of dominance |
| JEL: | K21 L40 L41 Q20 |
| Date: | 2022–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:upa:wpaper:0040&r= |
| By: | Nicoleta-Elena Heghes (Dimitrie Cantemir Christian University of Bucharest, Romania); Cristina-Gabriela Schiopu (Institute of Psychiatry Socola Iasi, Romania) |
| Abstract: | Criminal law is based on a subjective characterization of an objective act. The dichotomy of the concept is the very base of the investigation process and, at the border of the two notions, stands the forensic psychiatry. It adds quality to quantity by constructing arguments and building a strong foundation for the undeniable definition of the criminal offence: guilt. If law analyses facts as quantitative manifestation of an antisocial activity, the psychological meaning of the guilt is dissected in a complex lexical and scientific family of equivalent aspects. Discernment, intent, responsibility, motivation, motive are constructs of environmental and internal cognitive and emotional influences that align into proportional connections, characterizing guilt, which implies past, present and future implications of a criminal offence. |
| Keywords: | criminal, guilt, discernment, expertise, psychiatry, law |
| Date: | 2021–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:smo:lpaper:0143&r= |