|
on Law and Economics |
| By: | Roxana Gutiérrez-Romero |
| Abstract: | This article develops and tests a theory of criminal governance, examining how drug trafficking organizations (DTOs) use bribery and violence to dominate resource-rich regions and counter state interventions. The study draws on data on over 500 political assassinations and 156 lethal attacks on politicians' relatives in Mexico since 2000. Using an instrumental variable approach, the causal effects of government actions on criminal strategies are identified. The findings reveal that DTOs use rent-seeking violence to influence the pool of political candidates in high-value areas. |
| Keywords: | Crime, Governance, Political violence, Instrumental variable, Law enforcement |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2025-19 |
| By: | Makofske, Matthew |
| Abstract: | Monitoring programs—by creating expected costs to regulatory violations—promote compliance through general deterrence, and are essential for regulating firms with potentially hazardous products and imperfectly observable compliance. Yet, evidence on how monitoring deployment affects perceived detection probabilities and—by extension—compliance, is sparse. Beginning in May 2020, pandemic-related protocols in Maricopa County, Arizona, required routine health inspections to occur by video-conference at food establishments with vulnerable populations (e.g., hospitals and nursing homes). Unlike conventional on-site inspections—which continued at most food establishments—these "virtual" inspections were scheduled in advance, and thus, easily anticipated. The virtual format also likely inhibits observation of some violations, further reducing detection probability. Tracking five violations that are detected by tests in both inspection formats, I find evidence of substantial anticipation-enabled detection avoidance. Comparing against contemporaneous on-site inspections, virtual inspections detect 53% fewer of these specific violations relative to pre-treatment levels, and that decrease reverses entirely when treated establishments are subsequently inspected on-site. Detected counts of all violations decrease 41% in virtual inspections. Consistent with general deterrence, this decrease is more than offset in establishments' first post-treatment on-site inspections, where detected counts exceed the pre-treatment average by 28%. Deterrence-effect heterogeneity suggests a simple inspection-targeting rule could improve overall compliance with existing agency resources. |
| Keywords: | deterrence, regulatory enforcement, inspection, food safety, public health |
| JEL: | I18 K32 Q18 |
| Date: | 2024–02–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:124316 |
| By: | Columbus, Simon; Feld, Lars P.; Kasper, Matthias; Rablen, Matthew D. |
| Abstract: | This study investigates how institutional rules and fairness in enforcement affect cooperation and compliance in heterogenous groups. In a preregistered online experiment (n = 1, 254), we vary both the existence of a rule governing contributions to a public good as well as whether enforcement of the rule is biased against some players. We find that merely stating a rule has a stronger effect on behaviour than rule enforcement. Specifically, institutional rules promote cooperation by strengthening personal and social norms, which in turn sustains contributions over time. In contrast, in the absence of a rule, norms are weaker and contributions decline. Fair rule enforcement reduces free-riding and increases compliance, but it also crowds out full cooperation. Finally, we find no evidence that biased rule enforcement erodes norms, reduces cooperation, or diminishes rule compliance. Our findings highlight the crucial role of institutional rules in strengthening norms and sustaining cooperation in heterogeneous groups, even in the absence of enforcement or when rule enforcement is biased. |
| Keywords: | public goods, rule compliance, rule enforcement, social norms |
| JEL: | H41 C72 C91 C92 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:aluord:315749 |
| By: | Barrett, Scott |
| Abstract: | I model the ocean as an array of lines set within a two-dimensional frame and show how the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) emerged as an equilibrium in customary international law. I find that custom codifies the efficient Nash equilibrium of enclosure for nearshore fisheries. For highly migratory and offshore fisheries, enclosure is inefficient, and customary law supports a more efficient " free sea” regime. The model also identifies the trigger for changes in property rights and the reason choice of a particular limit, like the current 200-mile zone, is arbitrary. In an asymmetric, regional sea, I find that the scope of the EEZ is determined by the relative power of coastal and distant water states, and need not be efficient. Finally, I find that proposals to nationalize the seas or ban fishing on the high seas are neither efficient nor supportable as equilibria in customary law. |
| Keywords: | closure of high seas; customary international law; exclusive economic zone; ocean fisheries |
| JEL: | F50 K33 Q22 |
| Date: | 2024–05–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:125568 |
| By: | Sulin Sardoschau; Annalí Casanueva Artís |
| Abstract: | Freedom of speech is central to democracy, but protests that amplify extremist views expose a critical trade-off between civil liberties and public safety. This paper investigates how right-wing demonstrations affect the incidence of hate crimes, focusing on Germany’s largest far-right movement since World War II. Leveraging a difference-in-differences framework with instrumental variable and event-study approaches, we find that a 20% increase in local protest attendance nearly doubles hate crime occurrences. We explore three potential mechanisms—signaling, agitation, and coordination—by examining protest dynamics, spatial diffusion, media influence, counter-mobilization, and crime characteristics. Our analysis reveals that large protests primarily act as signals of broad xenophobic support, legitimizing extremist violence. This signaling effect propagates through right-wing social media networks and is intensified by local newspaper coverage and Twitter discussions. Consequently, large protests shift local equilibria, resulting in sustained higher levels of violence primarily perpetrated by repeat offenders. Notably, these protests trigger resistance predominantly online, rather than physical counter-protests. |
| Keywords: | protest, signal, hate crime, refugees, right-wing |
| JEL: | D74 J15 D83 Z10 D72 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11745 |
| By: | Benjamin W. Arold; Elliott Ash; W. Bentley MacLeod; Suresh Naidu |
| Abstract: | This paper proposes novel natural language methods to measure worker rights from collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) for use in empirical economic analysis. Applying unsupervised text-as-data algorithms to a new collection of 30, 000 CBAs from Canada in the period 1986-2015, we parse legal obligations (e.g., “the employer shall provide...”) and legal rights (e.g., “workers shall receive...”) from the contract text. We validate that contract clauses provide worker rights, which include both amenities and control over the work environment. Companies that provide more worker rights score highly on a survey indicating pro-worker management practices. Using time-varying province-level variation in labor income tax rates, we find that higher taxes increase the share of worker-rights clauses while reducing pre-tax wages in unionized firms, consistent with a substitution effect away from taxed compensation (wages) toward untaxed amenities (worker rights). Further, an exogenous increase in the value of outside options (from a leave-one-out instrument for labor demand) increases the share of worker rights clauses in CBAs. Combining the regression estimates, we infer that a one-standard-deviation increase in worker rights is valued at about 5.7% of wages. |
| Keywords: | worker rights, collective bargaining, natural language processing, employment. |
| JEL: | J32 J52 K31 H24 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11766 |