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on Law and Economics |
| By: | Forestra, Alessandra (Southampton University); Megalokonomou, Rigissa (Monash University); Vlassopoulos, Michael (Southampton University) |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates whether crisis narratives affect how the judiciary handles tax evasion. We study this question in the context of the Greek debt crisis, in which tax evasion was publicly blamed for the fiscal collapse, and judges themselves experienced substantial salary cuts as part of the resulting austerity programme. Using a novel dataset compiled from Greek Supreme Court rulings between 2006 and 2014, we compare tax evasion appeals with appeals in other serious crimes not directly related to the fiscal crisis, such as homicide and rape, in a difference-in-differences framework. We find that the probability that the Supreme Court rejects tax-evasion appeals increases by about 25 percentage points relative to these control offences after January 2010—about a 43% increase relative to the pre-crisis baseline. Effects are larger in months with greater public attention to tax evasion, as measured by Google Trends, suggesting a role for salience. Our findings suggest that crisis narratives, par- ticularly when coupled with personal economic shocks to judges, can influence the judicial treatment of tax offences. |
| Keywords: | economic narratives, judicial decision-making, tax evasion, financial crisis, legal institutions, difference- in-differences |
| JEL: | D91 P16 K40 K42 H26 Z13 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18489 |
| By: | Mariam El Harras (ENCGT - Ecole Nationale de Commerce et de Gestion de Tanger - UAE - Abdelmalek Essaadi University [Tétouan] = Université Abdelmalek Essaadi [Tétouan]) |
| Abstract: | Regulatory technology (RegTech) is transforming financial compliance by integrating advanced information technologies to strengthen anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML-CFT) frameworks. Recent literature suggests that such technologies represent more than just an efficiency tool; they mark a paradigm shift in regulation and the evolution of financial oversight (Kurum, 2023). This paper aims to provide a narrative review of recent RegTech applications in financial crime prevention, with a focus on key compliance domains. A structured literature review was conducted to examine publications between 2020 and 2024 with a thematic synthesis of findings related to customer due diligence (CDD) and know your customer (KYC), transaction monitoring, regulatory reporting and compliance automation, information sharing and cross-border cooperation, as well as cost efficiency. Findings reveal that RegTech solutions give financial institutions more responsibility for detecting and managing financial crime risks, making them more active players in compliance processes traditionally overseen by regulators. The combined use of technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, and big data also generates synergistic effects that improve compliance outcomes beyond what these technologies achieve individually. This demonstrates the strategic relevance of integrated RegTech approaches. |
| Keywords: | Compliance Automation, Financial Crime Detection, Systematic Narrative Literature Review, AML-CFT, O33 RegTech, K22, G28, JEL Classification: E44, JEL Classification: E44 G28 K22 O33 RegTech AML-CFT Compliance Automation Financial Crime Detection Systematic Narrative Literature Review |
| Date: | 2025–08–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05324285 |
| By: | Sara Balestri (Dipartimento di Economia, Università di Perugia, Italy); Raul Caruso (Dipartimento di Politica Economica, DISCE, & International Peace Science Center (IPSC), Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano, Italy - European Center of Peace Science, Integration and Cooperation (CESPIC), Catholic University ‘Our Lady of Good Counsel’, Tirana, Albania) |
| Abstract: | We analyse to what extent land-related institutional settings affect the likelihood of communal violence in Sub-Saharan Africa and whether this relationship is conditioned by climate variability. Using a country–year panel covering the period 1990–2024, we focus on the occurrence of communal violence and examine the role of legal transparency and predictable enforcement of laws. The empirical analysis relies on a panel probit model for binary outcomes, controlling for socio-economic characteristics, land-use patterns, demographic pressure, and conflict persistence. The results show that higher levels of legal transparency and more predictable enforcement are consistently associated with a significantly lower likelihood of communal violence. This relationship proves robust across alternative specifications and sample restrictions. To address potential endogeneity in institutional quality, we implement a set of complementary strategies to account for unobserved heterogeneity, while exploiting early post-independence institutional conditions to mitigate concerns related to reverse causality. These checks support the robustness of the baseline association. Climate variability does not emerge as an independent driver of communal violence. Instead, drought acts as a threat multiplier by conditionally weakening the conflict-mitigating effect of legal institutions. Interaction effects indicate that while improvements in institutional quality substantially reduce the probability of communal violence under normal climatic conditions, this stabilizing effect progressively diminishes as drought severity increases and becomes negligible under severe drought. Therefore, as drought severity increases, the mitigating role of institutions progressively weakens. Overall, the findings highlight the central role of legal transparency and predictable enforcement in managing land-related tensions, while showing that their effectiveness is contingent on environmental stress. |
| Keywords: | communal violence, land institutional settings, climate shock, conflicts, Africa |
| JEL: | D74 O13 Q54 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ctc:serie5:dipe0057 |
| By: | Sardo, Alessio; Grillo, Allegra; Kaczmarek, Angelika; Mateos Durán, Arnulfo Daniel |
| Abstract: | This article investigates how legal systems and legal experts across Europe respond to short-term rental accommodation (STRA), focusing on enforcement and authority allocation. It combines a comparative legal analysis of Germany, Poland, Italy and Spain with an experimental expert survey of approximately 180 legal scholars, embedding a strategic–interaction game that varies regulatory and market conditions. Findings reveal institutional lock-in: both legal systems as a whole and legal experts as individuals rely on traditional property/tenancy and competition frames, reinforcing path dependence. Experts also tend to overestimate compliance, even when fines are low and easily absorbed, underestimating the likelihood of strategic non-compliance. |
| Keywords: | short-term rental accommodation; Airbnb; overtourism; European Union competition law; affordable housing; tenancy models |
| JEL: | R21 R50 |
| Date: | 2026–03–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:137828 |
| By: | 周勇 (中国石油大学（华东）) |
| Abstract: | This paper identifies the fundamental reason why the United States has been unable to curb the rampant gun violence: gun ownership and shooting have become an inalienable basic necessity of life for the American people. Since public interest in and demand for ammunition are far less than those for firearms, an ammunition ban is the only viable policy to fundamentally resolve the rampant gun violence. Such a policy would prohibit the private possession of ammunition and specialized components for its manufacture, while allowing government-authorized and regulated commercial shooting ranges and hunting outfitter to possess ammunition and conduct lawful shooting activities. It would also permit the collection of certified top-tier antique ammunition by collectors, allows reloading enthusiasts to reload ammunition in government-authorized and regulated reloading workshops, and provides a service to deliver the reloaded ammunition to their designated commercial shooting ranges or hunting outfitter for future use. The government subsidizes commercial shooting ranges, hunting outfitter, and reloading workshops, making their primary services free to consumers. The government will also purchase assets at fair market value or provide transition subsidies to businesses in industries suffering revenue losses due to the new policy, as needed, and offer generous unemployment benefits to affected workers. The new policy implements a series of robust regulatory measures for ammunition in civilian circulation, including authorizing law enforcement agencies to search for ammunition carried on persons or stored in residences without cause during the first year of implementation, and mandating the installation of integrated firing counters on newly manufactured firearms. These measures ensure that ammunition is not lost or stolen, thereby protecting law-abiding citizens from harm by criminals. The new policy does not substantially infringe upon the American people’s right to shoot, while significantly reducing the cost of shooting for the public. Consequently, it is certain to gain the support of the vast majority of gun owners, thereby overcoming the obstacles posed by the Second Amendment and ensuring smooth implementation. The new policy has little impact on the firearms industry’s revenue and does not increase the government’s fiscal burden, making it entirely feasible. |
| Date: | 2026–04–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:3tuyp_v1 |
| By: | Bjørnskov, Christian (Aarhus University, Denmark); Berggren, Niclas (Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN)) |
| Abstract: | Populists typically frame politics as a conflict between a corrupt elite and a virtuous people and are skeptical of institutional constraints, including those protecting freedom of expression, as they seek to control the public narrative. We ask to what extent de jure constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression constrain such actors and when speech can be de facto curtailed despite formal protections, with a particular focus on emergency derogation clauses. We explore these questions in panel data for 75 countries with multi-party systems between 1970 and 2020. Findings show that right-wing populist representation is associated with lower de facto freedom of expression, but mainly where the constitution offers an opt-out in emergencies or fails to impose clear non-emergency limits on restrictions of expression. These findings demonstrate that constitutional design and populist influence jointly determine the extent to which constitutional promises of free expression are honored in practice. |
| Keywords: | Freedom of expression; Constitutional constraints; Constitutional compliance; Populism; Media freedom |
| JEL: | K00 P16 P50 |
| Date: | 2026–04–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hhs:iuiwop:1557 |
| By: | Badr Guelida (UM5 - Université Mohammed V de Rabat [Agdal]) |
| Abstract: | Real property is one of the fundamental rights that one seeks to own. It plays a significant role in meeting both social and economic needs. The concept of economic real property takes its origins from the Romanian law reflects two opposing facets: the first is expressed as "positive ownership", which is the effective exercise of management power over a thing that one does not legally own, potentially to realize benefits , in one's own interest and in the interest of the legal owner, the latter being certain to eventually gain full ownership of the asset itself or a substituted asset, or its value.and the second as "passive ownership" whereas at the end of the term, for the complete ownership of an asset (or of a substituted asset or its value) for which one is not the legal owner, and on which the legal owner exercises, during this time, the power of management in the interest, for the benefit, of the economic owner to whom can possibly be added (but never exclusively) their own interest. This paper aims to examine how real estate property is impacted by economic factors in Moroccan and comparative law. The comparative legal methodology is adopted to study the spirit of the different legal systems, namely the French law due to historical considerations and the Anglo-Saxon law. The findings of the study reveal that economic factors contribute to the development emersion of a novel approach to real property. |
| Abstract: | La propriété immobilière constitue l'un des droits fondamentaux auxquels tout individu aspire. Elle joue un rôle essentiel dans la satisfaction des besoins à la fois sociaux et économiques. Le concept de propriété immobilière économique trouve son origine dans le droit romain, qui met en évidence deux facettes opposées : La première, dite « propriété positive », correspond à l'exercice effectif du pouvoir de gestion sur une chose dont on n'est pas le propriétaire légal, dans le but d'en tirer des avantages, à la fois dans son propre intérêt et dans celui du propriétaire légal. Ce dernier est assuré d'obtenir, à terme, la pleine propriété du bien lui-même, d'un bien de remplacement ou de sa valeur. La seconde, dite « propriété passive », renvoie à la situation inverse : à la fin du terme, la pleine propriété d'un bien (ou d'un bien de remplacement, ou de sa valeur) revient à une personne qui n'en est pas le propriétaire légal, tandis que, durant cette période, le propriétaire légal exerce le pouvoir de gestion du bien dans l'intérêt et au bénéfice du propriétaire économique, auquel peut éventuellement s'ajouter (sans jamais l'exclure totalement) son propre intérêt. Cette étude a pour objectif d'examiner comment la propriété immobilière est influencée par les facteurs économiques dans le droit marocain et dans une perspective de droit comparé. La méthodologie juridique comparative est adoptée afin d'analyser l'esprit des différents systèmes juridiques, notamment le droit français, pour des raisons historiques, et le droit anglo-saxon. Les résultats de cette recherche révèlent que les facteurs économiques contribuent à l'émergence et au développement d'une nouvelle approche du droit de propriété immobilière. |
| Keywords: | Comparative law, Propriété immobilière, Real contract, Real property, Economic property, Droit comparé, Fiducie, Contrat immobilier, Trust propriété économique |
| Date: | 2026–01–26 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05545019 |
| By: | Roland Bénabou (Princeton University); Jean Tirole (TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, IAST - Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse) |
| Abstract: | We analyze how private decisions and optimal public policies are shaped by personal and societal preferences, material incentives, and social norms. We show how honor and stigma interact with incentives and derive optimal taxation. We then analyze the expressive role of law as embodying society's values and identify when it calls for a weakening or a strengthening of incentives. The law should be softened when it signals agents' general willingness to contribute to the public good and toughened when it signals social externalities. We also shed light on norms-based interventions, societies' resistance to economists' messages, and the avoidance of cruel and unusual punishments. |
| Keywords: | Expressive law, Social norms, Incentives, Motivation |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05577272 |