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on Law and Economics |
| By: | Alessio Carrozzo Magli; Giovanni Righetto; Antonio Schiavone |
| Abstract: | Organised crime groups often deliver electoral support to politicians, yet how they are rewarded remains unclear. Using data from Sicilian municipalities (1992–2022), we show that narrowly won races by Forza Italia, Silvio Berlusconi’s party, coincide with sharp declines in the reallocation of confiscated mafia assets—but only in mafia-controlled areas. Exploiting historical variation in the mafia’s vote-buying capacity, we find that municipalities with stronger historical ties experience larger post-election declines, exclusively under Berlusconi’s governments. Instrumenting modern support with this proxy further reinforces the plausibly causal evidence that national authorities reward organised crime through policy inaction. |
| Keywords: | organised crime, mafia, vote buying, corruption, misallocation of confiscated assets, political economy |
| JEL: | D72 D73 H11 K42 P16 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12330 |
| By: | Nils Braakmann (Newcastle University Business School, Newcastle University); Andy (Department of Economics, University of Reading); J. James Reade (Department of Economics, University of Reading); Gennaro Rossi (Department of Economics, University of Reading) |
| Abstract: | While the relationship between football matches and crime has been well documented, little is known about whether such events also escalate violent interactions between police officers and civilians. This study addresses that gap by analysing use of force data from the Metropolitan Police Service in London to assess the impact of football matches on police behaviour. We find that on match days, the number of use of force incidents increases by an average of 0.772 in the boroughs where games are held. This effect is geographically concentrated around football stadium and is primarily driven by matches involving popular clubs, or those with violent fan bases. We find no evidence of spatial or temporal displacement of incidents. We also find some suggestive evidence that incidents may be more frequent in the case of unexpected losses. We make the case that despite the long-standing association between football and crime, the effects are considerably smaller compared to other popular mass events. |
| Keywords: | policing, football, stop and search, police use of force |
| JEL: | K42 H11 L83 |
| Date: | 2025–12–15 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rdg:emxxdp:em-dp2025-07 |
| By: | Pavithra Manivannan (xKDR Forum); Gokul K. Sunoj (xKDR Forum); Bhargavi Zaveri-Shah (The Professeer) |
| Abstract: | How long does it take to enforce a court decree in India? This paper seeks to answer this question for civil and commercial litigation and arbitration awards. We measure the duration and mode of disposal of about 20, 000 applications filed before the Bombay High Court for the enforcement of court decrees during an eight year period. We find that it takes close to two years to enforce a decree in India. While this finding aligns with anecdotal estimates, we dig deeper to find how such application proceedings are disposed of. We find that a bulk of the execution applications are dismissed by the court not on merit but for reasons of non-prosecution. We offer plausible explanations for such poor enforcement outcomes. |
| JEL: | K40 K41 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:anf:wpaper:46 |
| By: | Nicholas Economides (Stern School of Business, New York University, New York, NY, USA); Ioannis Lianos (Faculty of Laws, University College London, London, United Kingdom); Christos Makridis (Arizona State University) |
| Abstract: | We examine when interoperability should serve as a structural response to market concentration produced by scaling laws, network effects, and data driven complementarities and capabilities in the digital economy. Digital infrastructures such as operating systems, cloud platforms, payments, and AI systems exhibit superlinear returns to scale that interact with multi-sided feedback loops to generate dominant positions and persistent bottlenecks. However, interoperability can also dilute beneficial complementarities, create security and privacy risks, and in some cases weaken incentives to invest. The paper makes two contributions. First, we develop a conceptual framework that treats digital ecosystems as lattices of complementarities linking users, developers, data, and infrastructure. Scaling laws are empirical signatures of supermodular relationships. Interoperability becomes a lattice restructuring tool that selectively weakens complementarities that entrench market (economic) power while preserving those that support quality, safety, and innovation. Second, we pair this economic account with a comparative analysis of legal and institutional approaches to interoperability. Examples include telecom interconnection, the Microsoft antitrust cases, the EU Digital Markets Act and Data Act, digital health regulation in the EU and the US, and emerging sector specific regimes in blockchain and AI. This comparison clarifies how horizontal and vertical interoperability obligations distribute network (complex systems) complementarities across layers and how ex ante and ex post tools differ in their ability to reshape digital ecosystems. We also argue that interoperability has emerged in the EU as a broader legal principle enshrined across multiple areas of law, including competition law and digital regulation. In sum, we provide a unified view of interoperability as a family of interventions that determine which complementarities are internalized by a single platform and which are shared across rivals and customers. Effective policy requires aligning the locus of interoperability with the structure of complementarities and the risks of fragmentation. |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:net:wpaper:2511 |
| By: | Massimo Anelli, Paolo Pinotti, Zachary Porrecw |
| Abstract: | We study the short- and long-term effects of organized crime across neighborhoods in U.S. cities by exploiting the migration of Sicilian Mafia members in the 1920s who fled a large-scale repression campaign in Italy. Using newly linked administrative and historical data from the U.S. Census, Social Security records, and declassified files of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, we show that neighborhoods hosting enclaves of migrants from Sicilian towns targeted by the repression later became centers of Italo-American Mafia activity. These neighborhoods experienced higher violence, incarceration, and financial exclusion in the short run, but higher educational attainment and employment in the long run. The results suggest that while the arrival of organized criminal networks initially intensified conflict and exclusion, their subsequent consolidation generated localized economic spillovers, helping to explain the long-term resilience and persistence of organized crime. |
| Keywords: | Electoral Rules, Immigration, Salience |
| JEL: | D72 J24 J61 R23 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:baf:cbafwp:cbafwp25259 |
| By: | Linovski, Orly |
| Abstract: | Despite calls for reform, many transit agencies rely heavily on enforcement to increase fare revenue and perceptions of safety. Both fare evasion and behaviour violations (like loitering and public intoxication) can carry heavy fines, and lead to debt collection and criminal justice system involvement. Yet, there has been limited examination of the financial and social costs of transit fines, and whether enforcement programs can achieve revenue goals. Using administrative data obtained through freedom of information requests, I document the nature and extent of transit enforcement and fines in sixteen Canadian cities. I find that transit fines are excessively punitive when compared with parking violations, with fines on average five times higher than similar parking infractions. While there may be deterrence value from enforcement, few transit fines are paid, and the costs of enforcing transit violations are likely significantly greater than revenue from payments. Given this, transit agencies should evaluate the goals, impacts, and outcomes of enforcement programs, with a full accounting of both the financial and social costs, and consideration of alternative programs. |
| Date: | 2025–12–23 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:stw6y_v1 |
| By: | Jackson, Nadine R. |
| Abstract: | This article examines U.S. immigration detention as a revenue-generating legal system that profits from prolonged confinement and bodily deterioration. The second Trump administration has systematized this violence through unprecedented expansion, dismantling of oversight, and concentration of executive authority. Drawing on government policy, administrative datasets, facility records, and case documentation, the analysis demonstrates how detention institutionalizes medical neglect, retaliation, solitary confinement, reproductive coercion, language exclusion, deathbed releases, and jurisdictional manipulation as routine administrative practice. Bilateral transfer agreements extend this system extraterritorially, outsourcing custody to sites of documented torture where U.S. officials create conditions meeting the legal definition of enforced disappearance. The article theorizes this configuration as extractive authoritarianism, a mode of governance where legal formalism enables capital accumulation through the exploitation of civil vulnerability. This framework advances critical socio-legal scholarship by demonstrating how procedural compliance produces structural violence within formally lawful systems. It reveals the persistence of detention’s harms across cycles of reform and establishes the necessity of abolitionist responses. |
| Date: | 2025–12–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:rhv2m_v1 |