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on Law and Economics |
| By: | Patrice Bougette (Université Côte d'Azur, CNRS, GREDEG, France); Oliver Budzinski (Ilmenau University of Technology, Germany); Frédéric Marty (Université Côte d'Azur, CNRS, GREDEG, France) |
| Abstract: | This paper explores the evolving landscape of competition law enforcement, focusing on the dynamic interplay between ex-ante and ex-post approaches. Amidst the digital transformation and regulatory shifts, traditional enforcement mechanisms are being re-evaluated. This study aims to dissect the economic rationale behind these shifts, proposing a hybrid framework that balances legal certainty with the flexibility needed to address contemporary market challenges. In particular, the analysis highlights the emergence of new competition policy approaches that combine regulatory-type interventions with strengthened enforcement strategies. |
| Keywords: | Competition Law Enforcement, Ex-ante and Ex-post Approaches, Anticompetitive Practices, Merger Control, Digital Economy |
| Date: | 2024–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:afd:wpaper:2407 |
| By: | Mohsin Abbas Syed (Legal Consultant) |
| Abstract: | EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Immovable property is a precious and limited resource. It has always attracted human attention for ownership and possession. Be it the feudal system of the West or the Jagir system of the Indian subcontinent, immovable property played a signiï¬ cant role in evolving social structures in any society. Even the communist philosophy revolved around it. During the past more than a century, the proper use of immovable property has played a pivotal role in the economic development of various nations. This has been done through systemic reforms by enacting laws for the protection and enforcement of property rights. This report takes the reader from the introduction of property and property rights, their etymology and history to the protection and enforcement of property rights in various jurisdictions of the world. The position of Pakistan in property rights protection based on international reviews, indices, and rankings is captured to identify problems relating to such rights. It contains a detailed introduction and analysis of the Torrens system before analyzing gaps in the property rights system of laws in Punjab. Based on these deliberations, certain conclusions have been drawn and speciï¬ c recommendations have been made for systemic reforms requiring legislative intervention. Property rights are internationally recognised rights and almost every nation has laws for the protection of private property rights. Apart from a hiatus of less than a century of communism, private property rights remained a predominant feature of every nations legal system. Even the present-day communist nations have started creating room for private property rights for economic development. After independence, Pakistan did not focus on property rights except for an unï¬ nished agenda of land reforms. The digitisation of land records is more of an administrative reform than bringing a sea change in the system of property rights. The Constitution expressly provides for property rights but the laws to protect those rights were mostly made during the colonial era with a different mindset and for different times. Land laws applicable to rural areas, transfer of property laws, eminent domain law, legal restrictions on land alienation, and property dispute settlement laws are all colonial laws inherited by the state after independence. Some of the laws relating to immovable property passed after independence, like preemption, possession, katchi abadis, and electronic transactions laws went the other way instead of promoting property rights. The law relating to strata titles and condominiums is conspicuously missing from the property laws of Punjab. As expected, Pakistan fared poorly on all the international indices on property rights. It has consistently performed poorly on the World Bank, Infrastructural Development Associations Country Policy, and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) on property rights, and occupies 156th rank out of 175 countries ranked on the property rights index of the Heritage Foundation. Worse still is the 104th rank out of 125 countries on the International Property Rights Index (IPRI). It consistently ranked very low on the measure registering property in the erstwhile Doing Business Index of the World Bank. A similar ranking is expected in the forthcoming B-READY Index of the World Bank which will replace the Doing Business Index. The existing property law reforms in Punjab are sporadic and are not likely to provide an impetus for economic revival. Reform measures should come as a package and not cover a single aspect of property-related laws. In recent years, it did make some progress on the digitisation of land records, ensuring inherited property rights of women and honouring tenancy agreements other than agricultural tenancies. A comparative analysis of the legal systems relating to property rights shows that economic progress made by Singapore, New Zealand, and Australia is based on a solid foundation of one of the most effective property rights laws in the world. An analysis of the property rights system of England and Wales has also been made apart from a detailed analysis of Indian laws of property. This story is repeated throughout the world that the developed economies either have robust property rights laws or the fast-growing economies are trying to catch up on property law reforms to hasten their economic progress. Sir Robert Richard Torrens has the credit of coming up with a novel initiative some 170 years ago on property law reforms. The system is named after him as the Torrens system based on mirror, curtain, and guarantee principles. This initiative has since changed the worlds view of immovable property being a private affair of the owner with hardly any responsibility of the state other than the state being the custodian and guarantor of title to the private properties. This system has its positives and negatives but it is still regarded as one of the best possible systems for protection and enforcement of property rights. In Punjab, the deed registration system for immovable property transactions has been prevalent for more than a century. That too is not universally applied and many entities, including private societies and companies, are the custodians of property transactions. This has resulted in a lack of investment in general and especially in the development of private properties. Financial institutions are reluctant to provide credit to small farmers and for large holdings they hedge. Hence, credit on land security does not come cheap; rather it is costlier than other securities. There are huge conflicts over property disputes and these conflicts have overburdened the judiciary. These conflicts invariably turn violent and have resulted in the loss of many precious lives. Multiple factors in our legal system are responsible for defective titles and consequential conflicts. Universal registration of all property transactions by a sole state agency, the introduction of the Torrens system, the digitisation of entire land and strata properties in juxtaposition with cadastral maps, the rationalisation of taxation on property transactions, allowing online property transactions, capacity building of land administration ofï¬ cials in modern technologies, and reforms in laws relating to eminent domain and katchi abadis is a way forward for introducing an effective system of property rights in Punjab. This will require the repeal of some laws, substitution of few, amendment of others, and enactment of new laws. |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pid:rrepot:2024:23 |
| By: | Christoph Engel (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods) |
| Keywords: | comparative law, contract fulfilment, change in circumstances, experiment, large language model, GPT, manipulating language of stimulus material |
| JEL: | C45 C81 C88 C91 D91 K12 K40 P50 |
| Date: | 2024–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mpg:wpaper:2024_12 |
| By: | Morell, Alexander |
| Abstract: | A bonus on the fine in response to the defendant running a corporate compliance program is superfluous because working leniency programs provide all the incentives necessary to implement efficient compliance. Others opposed to such a bonus argue that unreduced fines are sufficient to incentivize the adoption of effective corporate compliance programs. Proponents, on the other hand, argue that a reduction in fines conditional on running a corporate compliance program incentivizes more investments in compliance. Both arguments are incomplete. It is true that, generally, sanctions alone provide only suboptimal incentives to invest in compliance because some compliance investments (those in detecting infringements, i.e., "policing") can increase the detection probability for cartels that remain. However, leniency programs provide an additional incentive to invest in compliance to find cartels in-house as all cartelists strive for being the first to report. Comparing the two effects shows that under plausible assumptions the latter dominates, rendering a bonus on the fine superfluous. |
| Keywords: | Corporate compliance programs, leniency programs, antitrust sanctioning, corporate governance |
| JEL: | G34 L22 L41 |
| Date: | 2024 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:safewp:306362 |
| By: | Marie Obidzinski (Université Paris Panthéon Assas, CRED, Paris, France); Yves Oytana (Université de Franche-Comté, CRESE, Besançon, France) |
| Abstract: | We characterize the socially optimal liability sharing rule in a situation where a manufacturer develops an artificial intelligence (AI) system that is then used by a human operator (or user). First, the manufacturer invests to increase the autonomy of the AI (i.e., the set of situations that the AI can handle without human intervention) and sets a selling price. The user then decides whether or not to buy the AI. Since the autonomy of the AI remains limited, the human operator must sometimes intervene even when the AI is in use. Our main assumptions relate to behavioral inattention. Behavioral inattention reduces the effectiveness of user intervention and increases the expected harm. Only some users are aware of their own attentional limits. Under the assumption that AI outperforms users, we show that policymakers may face a tradeoff when choosing how to allocate liability between the manufacturer and the user. Indeed, the manufacturer may underinvest in the autonomy of the AI. If this is the case, the policymaker can incentivize the latter to invest more by increasing his share of liability. On the other hand, increasing the liability of the manufacturer may come at the cost of slowing down the diffusion of AI technology. |
| Keywords: | K4 |
| Date: | 2024–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:afd:wpaper:2406 |
| By: | Cai, Liang; Song, Guangwen; Zhang, Yanji |
| Abstract: | Objectives Although the social disorganization tradition emphasizes the role of neighborhood context in shaping delinquent behaviors and neighborhood crime, researchers have rarely considered the influence of neighborhood context on criminals’ decision of where to offend. This study explicitly examines how concentrated disadvantage in both the origin and destination neighborhoods structures burglars’ preference for street physical disorder and spatial familiarity. Methods We measure observed and perceived physical disorder from 107, 858 street view images using computer vision algorithms. Geo-referenced mobile phone flows between 1, 642 census units are used to approximate offenders’ potential spatial knowledge about target neighborhoods. Discrete choice models are estimated separately for burglars from disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged neighborhoods (N=1, 972). Results While burglars residing in non-disadvantaged neighborhoods are not sensitive to physical disorder in non-disadvantaged target neighborhoods, they strongly avoid disadvantaged neighborhoods with disorder. Conversely, residents of neighborhoods with concentrated disadvantage swiftly act upon street disorder in better-off neighborhoods but not in disadvantaged neighborhoods. These tendencies to react to the presence of physical disorder on the street are also contingent on burglars’ potential familiarity with the target environment. Conclusions We highlight the importance of larger neighborhood structural characteristics and their interactions with spatial knowledge and environmental conditions such as visual signs of disorder, in criminal decision making. Physical disorder is not uniformly indicative of decay across neighborhoods and offenders. This divergent decision-making may also partially explain spatial heterogeneity of crime. Moreover, spatial knowledge is most effective in triggering or deterring actions in places that are categorically different from offenders’ residential spaces. |
| Date: | 2024–12–22 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:rcny3 |
| By: | Sophie Harnay (EconomiX (UMR 7235), UPL, Université Paris Nanterre, CNRS, 200 avenue de la République, 92001 Nanterre cedex, France); Fabienne Llense (EconomiX (UMR 7235), UPL, Université Paris Nanterre, CNRS, 200 avenue de la République, 92001 Nanterre cedex, France); Antoine Rebérioux (LADYSS (UMR 7533), Université Paris Cité, 8 place Paul Ricoeur, 75013 Paris, France); Gwenaël Roudaut (Département dâéconomie, Ecole Polytechnique, Route de Saclay, 91128 Palaiseau cedex, France) |
| Abstract: | In 2011, Britain and France introduced affirmative action policies aiming at improving board gender mix in listed companies. While the reforms were similar in terms of target and timing, Britain opted for a âsoft lawâ (comply or explain) approach, while France enacted a mandatory quota. Using difference-in-differences analyses, we examine the differential impact of these two reforms on board composition and on women empowerment within boards. We first show that the quota has been associated with a more rapid adjustment of the gender mix without significant disruptive effects on board composition. However, we report that the quota has induced a more limited access of women to monitoring committees within boards, relative to soft law. As these committees are the most influential, this evidence shows that the quota came at a cost when considering within-board womenâs influence. |
| Keywords: | company boards, gender inequalities, leadership positions, quota, soft law, board committees |
| JEL: | J16 J78 K22 G34 G38 |
| Date: | 2024–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:afd:wpaper:2408 |
| By: | Benjamin Hansen; Kyutaro Matsuzawa; Joseph J. Sabia |
| Abstract: | While investments in schooling generate large private and external returns, negative peer interactions in school may generate substantial social costs. Using data from four national sources (Uniform Crime Reports, National Incident-Based Reporting System, National Crime Victimization Survey, National Electronic Injury Surveillance System) and a variety of identification strategies, this study comprehensively explores the effect of in-person schooling on contemporaneous juvenile violence. Using a proxy for in-person schooling generated from anonymized smartphone data and leveraging county-level variation in school calendars — including unique, large, localized changes to in-person instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic — we find that in-person schooling is associated with a 28 percent increase in juvenile violent crime. A null finding for young adults is consistent with a causal interpretation of this result. The effects are largest in larger schools and in jurisdictions with weaker anti-bullying policies, consistent with both concentration effects and a peer quality channel. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that relative to closed K-12 schools, in-person schooling generates $233 million in monthly violent crime costs. |
| JEL: | I2 I24 K41 |
| Date: | 2024–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33317 |