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on Law and Economics |
| By: | Andres, Leander; Bauernschuster, Stefan; Dahl, Gordon; Rainer, Helmut; Schüller, Simone |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the impact of birthright citizenship on youth crime. We leverage a German reform which automatically granted birthright citizenship to eligible immigrant children born in Germany after January 1, 2000 and administrative crime data from three federal states. We find that immigrant youth who acquired citizenship at birth are substantially less likely to engage in criminal activity, with estimates indicating a 70% reduction in crime. These results are particularly relevant in light of ongoing debates in the U.S. about abolishing birthright citizenship. Our findings suggest that inclusive citizenship policies can reduce crime and its associated costs, which in turn could strengthen social cohesion. |
| JEL: | J15 K42 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21376 |
| By: | Fabian Scheidegger; Vincent Glatz; Bruno Lanz |
| Abstract: | Using daily police records for 2, 145 Swiss municipalities matched to high-resolution weather data over 2009-2022, we estimate the effect of weather shocks on three categories of violent crime: general, domestic, and sexual violence. Identification comes from daily within-municipality variation in maximum temperature and precipitation, which we exploit in a fixed-effects Poisson regression. On hot days (≥30°C) relative to mild days (10-15°C), offenses rise by approximately 15% for general violence, 18% for domestic violence, and 60% for sexual violence, with the sexual-violence response markedly nonlinear above 15°C. Precipitation reduces general violence but has no consistent effect on the other two categories. As municipalities differ in their exposure to hot days, and projected warming will raise it, our estimates inform the place-based and seasonal targeting of prevention and enforcement resources within climate-adaptation policy in Switzerland. |
| Keywords: | Weather shocks, temperature, violent crime, domestic violence, sexual violence, Switzerland |
| JEL: | K42 Q54 I18 J16 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:irn:wpaper:26-07 |
| By: | Dills, Angela (Western Carolina University); Raghav, Manu (Indiana University Bloomington) |
| Abstract: | The use of various controlled and illegal substances, especially by young adults, has been a cause of much concern among policymakers, law enforcement officials, educators, and parents. State-level legalization of recreational marijuana in the United States raised concerns about potential adverse impacts on campus drug use and drug law violations. This paper combines data from three sources for 2001-02 to 2023-24, including college campus drug law violations that are collected under the Clery Act of 1990. We find that state legalization of recreational marijuana substantially reduced the arrests and disciplinary incidents for drug law violations. |
| Keywords: | marijuana legalization, adolescent risky behavior, higher education, campus law enforcement |
| JEL: | I21 I23 K42 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18722 |
| By: | OECD |
| Abstract: | Effective regulatory delivery ensures that rules achieve their intended outcomes efficiently. Licensing, permitting, and inspections are the pillars of this system, balancing the need to protect public goods with the goal of reducing administrative burdens. This paper explores how data-driven regulation and digital technologies, including data analytics and artificial intelligence, can help authorities target high-risk areas, streamline enforcement, and allocate resources more effectively. By adopting risk-based and technology-enabled approaches, regulators can enhance compliance, reduce unnecessary interventions, and strengthen public trust in regulatory processes. |
| JEL: | H83 K42 O33 |
| Date: | 2026–06–30 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:govaah:25-en |
| By: | Yann Lecorps (Université Paris Panthéon Assas, CRED UR 7321, F-75005 Paris, France); Khaoula Naili (Université Marie et Louis Pasteur, CRESE UR3190, F-25000 Besançon, France); Marie Obidzinski (Université Paris Panthéon Assas, CRED UR 7321, F-75005 Paris, France); Yves Oytana (Université Marie et Louis Pasteur, CRESE UR3190, F-25000 Besançon, France); Téa Toutounji (Université Paris Panthéon Assas, CRED UR 7321, F-75005 Paris, France) |
| Abstract: | We examine the use of digital versus classical evidence in cases handled by the International Criminal Court (ICC). We study and exploit variations in the use of evidence (i) between stages of proceedings, namely pre-trial and trial, and (ii) between parties in ICC trials. Since the standard of proof varies between stages of the proceedings, we frame the situation using a simple model and discuss the results we can empirically expect. The model predicts that the prosecution’s reliance on both types of evidence should increase from the pre-trial to the trial stage, although the relative magnitude of the increase remains ambiguous. Our empirical results confirm that references to both categories of evidence are more frequent at trial and show that the rise is proportionally larger for classical evidence than for digital evidence. For variations in the use of evidence between the parties involved in the trial, our approach is purely empirical. We find that the relative intensity of references to digital evidence by parties varies across cases and across trial sub-phases. |
| Keywords: | International Criminal Court, digital evidence, standard of proof, social media, textual analysis, sentiment analysis |
| JEL: | K4 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crb:wpaper:2026-04 |
| By: | Galasso, Alberto; Virag, Gabor |
| Abstract: | Motivated by a growing body of empirical evidence documenting overconfidence among litigants, this paper studies the design of judicial mechanisms when defendants hold biased beliefs about their likelihood of conviction. Subjective biases have heterogeneous effects across defendant types and may fundamentally alter the structure of optimal judicial procedures. Relative to the benchmark with unbiased defendants, biased beliefs reduce the benefits of plea offers and, in some cases, the value of offering a menu of trial procedures to screen defendants. Overconfidence does not facilitate surplus extraction; instead, it reduces court welfare while increasing defendants’ expected utility. A calibration of the model using empirical evidence on judicial error rates and litigant overconfidence suggests that these effects are of significant magnitude. |
| JEL: | D82 K41 D91 K40 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21416 |
| By: | Fontana, Nicola; Nannicini, Tommaso; Snyder, James |
| Abstract: | We study whether the partisan affiliation of U.S. state governors affects the outcome of partisan judicial elections. Exploiting close gubernatorial races from 1946 to 2023, we find that electing a Democratic (Republican) governor significantly increases the subsequent vote share of Democratic (Republican) judicial candidates. This executive spillover effect arises despite the formal institutional independence of the judiciary and holds in contexts with similar levels of polarization and partisanship. Our findings show that, under partisan judicial elections, even narrow shifts in executive power can erode the separation of powers, as some voters adjust their judicial choices in response to the partisan control of the executive. This effect is stronger when executive and legislative powers are unified and when the judicial election occurs soon after the governor's race. |
| JEL: | D72 D73 K40 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21544 |
| By: | Maike Roth (Johannes Gutenberg University, Germany); Prof. Dr. Friedrich Schneider (Johannes Kepler University, Germany) |
| Abstract: | Using a survey for Germany, we evaluate access to illicit tobacco products and the propensity to engage in illicit purchasing. By separating realized opportunities from stated openness toward future illicit purchases, the analysis provides insight into the behavioral foundations of illicit tobacco markets. This is relevant for current policy. If illicit demand responds not only to prices but also to attitudes toward taxation and regulation, tax increases may have heterogeneous effects across groups. Overall, the findings suggest that effective tobacco tax policy should not rely solely on price incentives, as perceived restrictions of freedom may increase openness to illicit markets. |
| Keywords: | Tobacco tax noncompliance, conducted survey, illicit tobacco products and markets, price incentive, regulation |
| JEL: | K42 M38 H26 O17 |
| Date: | 2026–06–19 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:jgu:wpaper:2606 |
| By: | Yann Lecorps (Université Paris Panthéon Assas, CRED UR 7321, F-75005 Paris, France); Marie Obidzinski (Université Paris Panthéon Assas, CRED UR 7321, F-75005 Paris, France); Yves Oytana (Université Marie et Louis Pasteur, CRESE UR3190, F-25000 Besançon, France) |
| Abstract: | This paper examines how technological progress, by lowering the costs of both disseminating and fabricating information, affects the work of fact-finding missions investigating human rights violations. Using a game-theoretic model, we show that when (i) authentication costs are sufficiently low and (ii) technology makes it harder to distinguish false from genuine information, a positive technological shock increases the expected authentication cost while reducing information quality: although the circulation of genuine information increases, false information spreads even faster. When these conditions do not hold, the effects are ambiguous. |
| Keywords: | Disinformation, fake news, fact-finding missions, human rights violations, opensource investigations |
| JEL: | K42 K38 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:crb:wpaper:2026-03 |
| By: | Broso, Matteo; Valletti, Tommaso |
| Abstract: | We study the impact of mergers on quid-pro-quo lobbying and elections in a political agency model. Two incumbent firms can lobby an incumbent politician to block a pro-competitive reform. The politician’s type determines whether they are susceptible to the firms’ influence or not. A representative voter tries to infer the politician’s type monitoring the policy-making process. We show that lobbying increases when firms merge because rents from political protection are not dissipated by price competition. While greater market concentration may increase prices and political influence, it also improves voters’ ability to screen bad politicians by observing distorted policy outcomes. This generates a novel trade-off: mergers can harm consumers through market and political power, yet improve selection of politicians. We characterize when standard consumer welfare–based merger control is too lenient or too strict once these political economy effects are taken into account. |
| Keywords: | Mergers; Lobbying; Consumer welfare standard; Antitrust policy; market power; Political economy of competition policy |
| JEL: | D72 D43 L41 L13 K21 |
| Date: | 2026–04 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21420 |
| By: | Ewan McGaughey |
| Abstract: | Are democracy and socialism compatible? Does democratic socialism work? And what is its relation to the law? This paper shows that democratic socialism, by whatever name, is the dominant political model in wealthy democracies, popular among voters, and the chief driver of human progress. It explains how democratic socialism was built through the understanding of capitalism’s failures, especially the shape-shifting legal forms of private property in the means of production, freedom of contract, and competitive corporations. It identifies the 3 core features of 21st century democratic socialism: more public and common ownership, economic democracy on a floor of social rights, and fair taxes. These policies have been spreading, are the prevailing practice in most wealthy countries, and are highly popular among voters. It is a myth that the rules of capitalism lead to more innovation, productivity, less waste, or are good for democracy. The evidence suggests the reverse is true. Democratic socialism is humanity's greatest hope. |
| Keywords: | Democracy, socialism, law, labour, public ownership, economic democracy, fair taxes, innovation, productivity |
| JEL: | K31 K10 K11 K20 K22 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cbr:cbrwps:wp550 |
| By: | Christopher Markou |
| Abstract: | Abdi Aidid and Benjamin Alarie’s The Legal Singularity (2023) is the most developed statement of an institutional design programme that would re-organise legal reproduction around computational specification and real-time prediction. The book sorts existing critics into 2 camps: essentialists (Pasquale, Hildebrandt, Cobbe, Deakin and Markou) and rule-of-law theorists (Weber) and rebuts each on its own terms. This article develops a third kind of critique, structural rather than essentialist or principles-based, that the book’s defensive architecture is not calibrated to engage. Drawing on Luhmann’s account of legal autopoiesis and on Golia Jr and Teubner’s reconstruction of societal constitutionalism, it argues that the legal singularity is not a perfected version of legality but a substitution. The diagnosis the article offers is one of engineered autopoiesis: a mode of social reproduction that retains legality’s vocabulary while substituting cybernetic control for its constitutive operations, and in which discretion is relocated into the politics of measurement. The programme is best refused not because it cannot deliver what it promises but because what it promises is no longer law. |
| Keywords: | Legal singularity, engineered autopoiesis, legal autopoiesis, societal constitutionalism, algorithmic governance, computational law, structured friction |
| JEL: | K40 O33 K24 K23 |
| Date: | 2026–06 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cbr:cbrwps:wp552 |
| By: | Snower, Dennis; Twomey, Paul |
| Abstract: | This article argues that the governance of artificial intelligence (AI) requires a fundamental institutional redesign rather than incremental regulatory reform. Existing frameworks fail due to structural misalignment with AI’s autonomy, compositionality, and concentration dynamics. In a context where global coordination is infeasible and national regulation insufficient, the paper advances coalition-based digital governance as a second-best yet effective solution. It develops a comprehensive architecture grounded in Control–Accountability–Protection (CAP), operationalized through interoperable standards, data-control infrastructure, and coordinated enforcement. The article further proposes layered guardrails—including trade-based compliance, soft-power monitoring, and hard-power sanctions—to ensure enforceability and redress across jurisdictions. |
| JEL: | D02 D82 F55 K23 L41 L86 O33 O38 P16 |
| Date: | 2026–05 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21564 |
| By: | Timothée Demont (Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS, AMSE, Marseille, France); Roberta Ziparo (Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS, AMSE, Marseille, France) |
| Abstract: | This paper studies whether expanding women’s decision-making authority within marriage affects female labor supply and girls’ human capital investment. We exploit a major reform of French marital law in 1966, which reallocated control over labor and financial decisions from husbands to wives while leaving divorce institutions unchanged. Using census and family survey data, we implement two complementary empirical strategies. First, exploiting the discontinuity in access to the new marital regime by date of marriage, we show that women married under the new regime are 7 percentage points more likely to be employed more than thirty years later, after childrearing constraints have largely passed. Second, using cohort- and gender-based exposure to the reform, we find that girls who are at key educational decision ages when the reform is announced complete more schooling and are 13 percent more likely to obtain a baccalauréat or a higher-education degree. These education gains translate into higher employment rates and access to higher-skilled occupations in adulthood. |
| Keywords: | Gender; Education; Labor supply; Marriage law; Intra-household decision making |
| JEL: | D13 J22 J24 K36 N3 |
| Date: | 2026–02–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aim:wpaimx:2606 |
| By: | Bernasco, Wim; Moneva, Asier; Steenbeek, Wouter |
| Abstract: | Bindler et al. (2024) examine whether, and to what extent, rights granted at ages 16 and 18, mainly access to drugs and motor vehicles, affect victimization rates at these age thresholds. In this replication report we identify five main claims from their abstract. We assess the extent to which these claims are computationally reproducible. For four of the claims we assess, in addition to robustness checks reported by Bindler et al. themselves, whether they are empirically robust against variations in offence definitions. Regarding computational reproducibility, we find that the replication package provided by the authors, together with data from Statistics Netherlands, allows us to reproduce the original findings with an almost perfect precision. Regarding our robustness checks, our results show that two of the main claims are supported, while the two other claims are most strongly supported for property offences and do not hold uniformly across other offence types. Taken together, we evaluate the original paper's findings as highly reproducible and largely, though not uniformly, robust to plausible changes in the dependent variable. |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:i4rdps:301 |