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on Law and Economics |
| By: | Eren, Ozkan; Hjalmarsson, Randi; Ozturk, Orgul |
| Abstract: | We exploit conditionally random assignment of case files to judges in a Southern U.S. state to study the effects of same-gender judge assignment on juvenile justice decisions and long-run socioeconomic outcomes. Using a generalized differences-in-differences design, we find evidence of same-gender gaps in sentencing decisions: relative to males, female judges are 18% less likely to incarcerate female than male defendants. A novel rank-order test confirms these findings and indicates that the results are not driven by a small subset of judges. Own-gender judicial assignment, especially for Black children, has lasting effects on socioeconomic outcomes beyond the courtroom: educational attainment increases while adult criminal involvement and welfare use decrease. Further analyses suggest that these long-run improvements are not just driven by differential incarceration decisions. |
| Keywords: | Discrimination; Incarceration; Education |
| JEL: | K40 J16 I20 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21104 |
| By: | Rubén Poblete-Cazenave (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) |
| Abstract: | In the United States, law enforcement kills three people per day, yet official statistics record only half. Using detailed geo‑location of police killings and exploiting spatial and temporal discontinuities in medicolegal death‑investigation systems across counties from 2000–2024, I show that sheriff‑coroner jurisdictions are 15–19 percentage points (approx. 30 percent) less likely to report killings to the FBI. The effect concentrates among Black victims and increases after high‑profile killings (Michael Brown, George Floyd), suggesting public scrutiny intensifies suppression rather than deterring it. The findings highlight how institutional dependence can systematically distort official record and hinder accountability. |
| Keywords: | Police Killings, Underreporting, Medico-legal death investigation office |
| JEL: | D73 H83 I18 J15 K42 |
| Date: | 2026–05–21 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:tin:wpaper:20260024 |
| By: | Boshoff, Janine; Machin, Stephen; Sandi, Matteo |
| Abstract: | Ten years of idiosyncratic variation in school closure dates for all secondary schools in England are combined with administrative records of educational and criminal trajectories linked at the individual level to study the impact of the school schedule on the dynamics of youth crime. When school is not in session, students commit more property offences, more serious violent offences and fewer minor violent offences. Increased thefts, robberies and violent assaults drive these effects. This is novel evidence of strong multiple crime effects that arise from the protective factor of schooling and which affect not only the incidence of violence, but also its severity and its targets. |
| Keywords: | crime;school attendance;exclusion |
| JEL: | K14 K42 H44 |
| Date: | 2026–06–24 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ehl:lserod:138975 |
| By: | Anelli, Massimo; Pinotti, Paolo; Porreca, Zachary |
| Abstract: | We document the transplantation of the Sicilian Mafia to the United States in the 1920s, when a large-scale repression campaign in Italy targeted Mafia strongholds and forced many Mafiosi to migrate, and study the resulting short- and long-term effects across neighborhoods in U.S. cities. 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 Mafia strongholds 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 income, employment, and educational attainment 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 benefits, helping to explain the long-term resilience and persistence of organized crime. |
| JEL: | K42 F22 N32 R23 D02 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20972 |
| By: | Jennifer Doleac |
| Abstract: | After decades of declining crime rates, the US experienced a spike in violent crime in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. While the most recently available data indicates that criminal activity has resumed its descent, crime continues to be a first-order problem for a large number of communities, and the costs of policing, prosecuting, and incarceration are borne by the affected and unaffected alike. The economic costs of crime in the US reach $5–6 trillion annually by some estimates. This paper reviews research and offers policy recommendations to reduce crime through prevention, deterrence, and rehabilitation. First, investing in young children’s health and education is extremely effective at reducing crime in the future. Second, policies that raise the probability that perpetrators are caught and face consequences are more effective at deterring crime than making the punishment longer or harsher. Finally, well intentioned policies with the goal of hiding information about past criminal activity, such as Ban the Box, can have unintended negative consequences. Policymakers therefore should look to long-term investments in children, such as reducing lead exposure and expanding teenage summer jobs programs, along with efforts to detect and apprehend perpetrators today, through technology and increased policing, as evidence-based and cost-effective strategies to lower the economic costs of crime and make communities safer. |
| Keywords: | crime, public policy |
| Date: | 2024–12–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cxx:wpaper:why-crime-matters-and-what-to-do-about-it |
| By: | Allouard, Hugo; Cecere, Grazia; De Sousa, Jose; Marie, Olivier; Picard, Ines |
| Abstract: | We study how the expansion of gig job opportunities affects local labor markets and crime in France. Food delivery platforms create flexible and low-barrier jobs that attract young and minority workers from disadvantaged areas, who have limited opportunities in the traditional labor market. Using staggered difference-in-differences, we show that platform entry substantially increases rider registrations and raises labor-market participation among male migrants. We also find sizable declines in violent offenses, petty theft, vandalism, and drug crimes, consistent with increased opportunity costs of crime and reduced unstructured time among high-risk individuals. Exploiting the legal minimum age of 18 for delivery work, an age-eligibility test shows that crime reductions are concentrated among those able to take up platform jobs. These results indicate that gig jobs can expand access to legal income for marginalized groups by reducing entry barriers, with associated declines in local crime. |
| Keywords: | Gig economy; Crime; Labor markets; Digital platforms |
| JEL: | J68 K42 L68 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21089 |
| By: | Hjalmarsson, Randi; Lindquist, Matthew |
| Abstract: | Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is highly prevalent amongst criminal justice populations: ADHD diagnoses and medication are upwards of five times more likely for individuals who have a Swedish prison record than those without. We merge Swedish prison registers (with detailed healthcare data) to out-of-prison healthcare, crime, and employment data to study the effect of in-prison ADHD diagnoses. For individuals with no ADHD history, this new diagnosis treatment can include an information shock, medication and/or therapy. We compare the pre- and post-prison dynamics for treated inmates to alternative undiagnosed comparison groups: all untreated individuals, untreated early spells for repeat offenders treated in later spells, or a matched and reweighted control group. A robust set of findings emerge. New in-prison ADHD diagnoses significantly and persistently increase post-prison ADHD and substance abuse related healthcare. Crime and labor market outcomes, however, do not improve. There are also significant family spill-over effects: both children and siblings with no previous history of ADHD are more likely to be treated for ADHD after a newly diagnosed family member’s prison spell. Though prison appears to serve as an institution to bring high-risk, vulnerable populations into the public healthcare system, our results suggest that ADHD related care may not be as effective at lowering crime as many policy makers argue. |
| JEL: | K42 I14 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21068 |
| By: | Jerg Gutmann; Pascal Langer; Matthias Neuenkirch |
| Abstract: | Many studies have evaluated whether sanctions improve or harm the living conditions of target populations, for example in terms of the protection of human rights. However, judging governments' responses to international sanctions based on their compliance with a universal human rights standard has been criticized as an imposition of Western values. We propose an alternative benchmark for government action that is not subject to the same criticism: whether governments comply with their own national constitutions as codified forms of the national social contract. Our analysis of 182 countries over the period 1962 to 2022 using panel DiD and event study estimators corroborates our theoretical expectation that government responses depend on the target's regime type. Whereas democracies improve their constitutional compliance under sanction pressure, autocracies start complying even less. These results suggest that sanctions can only make governments comply with their legal commitments if those governments face binding reelection constraints. |
| Keywords: | constitutional compliance, democracy, human rights, international sanctions |
| JEL: | F51 K38 K42 P48 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12788 |
| By: | Robert Gonzalez; |
| Abstract: | The deployment of military personnel in response to urban crime has become increasingly salient in the United States. Yet the effectiveness and efficiency of such deployments remain largely unknown. This paper studies the effect of the August 2025 deployment of National Guard troops in Washington, DC, using administrative crime data and a triple differences design that compares changes before and after the August 11 deployment across treated and untreated areas, relative to analogous periods in prior years. The deployment reduced robberies, motor vehicle thefts, and thefts, had no detectable effect on homicides or burglaries, and increased assaults with dangerous weapons. A cost–benefit analysis implies 30-day benefits of $6.45 million against costs of approximately $90 million. For comparison, a community-based monitoring program in Chicago achieved similar crime-reduction benefits at less than four percent of the cost. This underscores the relative inefficiency of large-scale military deployments as a crime-control strategy. |
| Keywords: | crime, military, national guard, policing, washington dc |
| JEL: | D72 H56 K42 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hic:wpaper:456 |
| By: | Duso, Tomaso; Peitz, Martin |
| Abstract: | Trade conflicts, geopolitical tensions, digital disruption, and the climate crisis pose major challenges for the European Union (EU) and its member states. As called for in the Draghi Report, industrial policy measures can increase competitiveness, strengthen resilience, and facilitate the twin transformation. This article explores ways in which competition policy can be realigned to better accommodate industrial policy objectives. Using German competition law as a reference point, it presents options with which legislatures and competition authorities can respond to current challenges, reconcile conflicting objectives, and adapt the decision-making framework. It then considers elements of a competition-oriented industrial policy, understood as an evidence-based, targeted approach in which competition serves both as a guiding principle and as a control variable. |
| Keywords: | Industrial policy; Competition; Regulation; Competition policy; Competitiveness; Internal market |
| JEL: | L40 L50 L52 K21 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20807 |
| By: | David Hall; Benjamin Hansen; Kyutaro Matsuzawa |
| Abstract: | We study the effect of drug decriminalization on overdose mortality using Oregon's Measure 110 and Washington's Blake decision. Synthetic-control estimates show that both decriminalization regimes sharply reduced drug arrests and were followed by sustained increases in overdose mortality relative to matched counterfactuals. The estimates imply approximately 1, 186 excess deaths in Oregon and 1, 895 in Washington from 2021 through 2023. We also revisit the role of fentanyl supply shocks. A fentanyl-share control may partly capture enforcement-driven declines in non-fentanyl NFLIS reports, while alternative fentanyl measures leave positive overdose effects. |
| JEL: | I12 I18 K40 K42 K49 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35427 |
| By: | Divakaruni, Anantha; Tveiten, Hedda Rytter; Hvide, Hans K. |
| Abstract: | We provide the first large-scale quasi-experimental evidence on the effectiveness of tightening insider trading regulation. The SEC in 2022 eliminated several loopholes in the regulation of 10b5- 1 trading plans. Linking 158, 000 stock sales by company executives to plan adoption dates, we document substantial pre-reform abnormal returns for “loophole trades†including single-trade plans and sales shortly after plan adoption. Although the reform shut the loopholes, executives’ abnormal returns did not decline. Plausible mechanisms include self-policing before the reform and shifting opportunistic trading toward the rule’s margin afterward. Our results highlight limits of legal design aimed at reducing insider opportunism. |
| Keywords: | Insider trading |
| JEL: | G14 G18 K22 K42 G34 J33 |
| Date: | 2026–02 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21199 |
| By: | Ajzenman, Nicolas; Dominguez, Patricio; Novaes, Lucas M. |
| Abstract: | Can electoral outcomes shape voters' perceptions of the past? We argue that electoral outcomes provide informational cues that prompt voters to reinterpret prior conditions, shifting the benchmarks on which accountability rests. We focus on perceptions of crime, a valence issue that voters likely take into account when choosing any candidate. We propose that perceptions of crime change immediately after an election, as voters reinterpret prior conditions through the lens of the relevance of crime in the winning candidate's platform. We leverage the timing of opinion surveys in Chile on public security to compare respondents interviewed just before and just after local elections, across municipalities where a right-wing mayor narrowly won versus narrowly lost. We show that shortly after a local right-wing candidate wins by a small margin, respondents report that their neighborhood, state, and country are less safe than those who answered the same survey a few days before the election. Victimization, which is unlikely to be misremembered, does not vary across groups of respondents. The findings show that this shift in perceptions directly affects electoral accountability: When political outcomes shape beliefs about past performance, accountability itself becomes endogenous to electoral results. |
| Keywords: | Crime perceptions; beliefs |
| JEL: | D84 D91 K42 H70 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21065 |
| By: | Emons, Winand; Lenhard, Severin; Parisi, Francesco |
| Abstract: | We study settlement bargaining under three alternative fee-shifting rules: the American Rule, the English Rule, and an optional feeshifting regime in which the defendant chooses whether the case will proceed under the American or the English Rule. The defendant knows whether his conduct gives rise to liability while the plaintiff only has a noisy signal. This two-sided asymmetric information creates scope for strategic misrepresentation: defendants who face liability may try to pass as if they do not, while plaintiffs with weak evidence may act as if they have a strong case. When litigation costs are similar for both parties, optional fee-shifting reduces litigation rates more effectively than either the American or the English Rule alone. |
| JEL: | D41 D82 |
| Date: | 2025–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:20847 |
| By: | d’Este, Rocco; Yuchtman, Noam |
| Abstract: | We provide evidence that the passage of “DNA laws†streamlining access to forensic DNA technology was a watershed in the exoneration of Black Americans. Exploiting staggered adoption across states, we find that DNA laws increased exonerations of wrongfully convicted Black individuals serving life sentences for sexual offenses by nearly 200%, freeing over 50 individuals — plausibly over 10% of the wrongfully convicted — and saving nearly 900 years of prison time. Our findings suggest that DNA laws redressed longstanding inequalities in access to other exoneration pathways. More generally, changes on multiple margins (technological and legal) may be necessary to reduce racial disparities. |
| Keywords: | Racial inequality |
| JEL: | K40 J15 D63 |
| Date: | 2026–03 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21309 |
| By: | Richard N. Langlois (University of Connecticut) |
| Abstract: | Legal institutionalists correctly emphasize that corporations are constituted by law rather than merely by private contract, but many wrongly conclude that shareholders do not own corporations and that corporations themselves cannot be objects of ownership. This paper argues instead that the Hansmann-Kraakman conception of the corporation – centered on legal personality, asset partitioning, transferable shares, delegated management, and investor ownership – is both compatible with legal institutionalism and superior as an account of the corporation’s economic role. The paper reconceptualizes the corporation as a modular legal architecture designed to cope with complexity, arguing that incorporation functions as a system of encapsulation and information hiding. By legally partitioning assets and defining organizational boundaries, the corporation creates a protected module within which rich, complex, and difficult-to-price interactions can occur. Corporate law thus operates as a set of abstract design rules that reduce the knowledge burdens associated with large-scale cooperation. This modular organizational form evolved gradually from medieval ecclesiastical corporations and chartered trading companies into the modern public corporation through the emergence of increasingly abstract and general legal rules of incorporation. The paper concludes that stakeholder and managerial theories ultimately rest on epistemic assumptions incompatible with a world of uncertainty and decentralized learning. The shareholder-owned corporation, embedded in external capital markets and disciplined by transferable ownership claims, evolved precisely because it is an effective institutional response to complexity, experimentation, and economic change. |
| Keywords: | corporate governance, shareholder ownership, legal institutionalism, modularity, Knightian uncertainty |
| JEL: | D23 G30 K22 L21 M14 N20 |
| Date: | 2026–07 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uct:uconnp:2026-03 |
| By: | Robert Gonzalez; Tannishtha Ghosh; Kelly Lifchez |
| Abstract: | Research on the determinants of election fraud typically focuses on conventional factors such as election monitoring, legal punishments, and voter education. This paper examines an often-overlooked factor: whether polling location (e.g., school, place of worship) influences election fraud. Combining validated fraud measures from the 2009 Afghan presidential election with a novel instrumental variable approach, we find that polling centers within schools report an 8 percentage-point lower likelihood of fraud compared to those within mosques. Two mechanisms may explain this difference. First, mosques designated as polling centers were more likely to be attacked by the Taliban, likely suppressing turnout and creating incentives for fraudulent votes through a vote-substitution channel. Second, election-related complaint data indicate systematic differences in the behavior of voters and polling officials between schools and mosques. Compared to mosques, voters at schools are more willing to file complaints, complainants are more often women, and polling officials are less likely to be the subject of complaints. |
| Keywords: | election fraud, insurgent violence, polling location |
| JEL: | D72 D73 K42 |
| Date: | 2029 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hic:wpaper:458 |
| By: | Anwar, Shamena; Bayer, Patrick; Hjalmarsson, Randi |
| Abstract: | This paper examines the role that juror race, gender, and age play in jury selection and trial outcomes in all civil jury trials that occurred over a twelve-year period in Sarasota and Lake Counties, Florida. The results indicate that juror demographics play a different role in civil trial outcomes than attorneys perceive. While attorneys’ use of peremptory challenges indicates that they view the average female, Black, and Hispanic jurors as being more plaintiff-friendly and juror age as not mattering, we find that female jurors seem to be less plaintiff-friendly than male jurors, juror age is important, and juror race does not seem to matter in the majority of cases. Collectively, these results indicate that attorneys might be engaging in the unconstitutional practice of race and gender-based peremptory challenges, although this practice is not effective in achieving their intended goals. |
| Keywords: | Demographics |
| JEL: | K00 K41 |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21103 |
| By: | Salustri, Andrea; Montefusco, Eugenio |
| Abstract: | This study examines several possible causes of marital relationship breakdown through the analytical framework of contract theory and game theory. The marital relationship is modeled as a long-term relational contract characterized by idiosyncratic investments that generate relationship-specific capital. The DRCGEL (Dynamic Relational Contract Game with Exit through Litigation) model is employed to formalize the paradox of dynamic inconsistency: the ex post rationality of forgiving a contractual breach in order to preserve the accumulated relational capital ultimately undermines the credibility of ex ante sanctions, thereby encouraging opportunistic behavior. The analysis is further extended through the DRCEEGL (Dynamic Relational Contract Enforcement Exploitation Game through Litigation) model, which demonstrates that, in the presence of information asymmetries and appropriable litigation-related advantages (such as the allocation of the marital home or spousal maintenance transfers), the legal system may evolve from a protective institution into a rent-extraction technology. This dynamic provides a sociological explanation for the marginalization of the paternal role and the erosion of his parental capacity as outcomes of an institutional failure in legislative mechanism design. The study concludes by proposing institutional reforms aimed at eliminating the profitability of conflict and strengthening incentives for cooperation. |
| Keywords: | teoria dei giochi; capitale relazionale; incoerenza dinamica; padri separati; enforcement exploitation game. |
| JEL: | C73 J12 K12 |
| Date: | 2026–07–13 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:130035 |
| By: | Frohly, Constance; Galbiati, Roberto; Henry, Emeric; Jacquemet, Nicolas |
| Abstract: | Moral reminders, also referred to as moral appeals or moral nudges, are widely used by governments, companies, and NGOs to promote pro-social behavior. These appeals function by either increasing the salience of moral concerns or the cost of diverting attention away from relevant information on payoffs or social norms. Drawing on over 400 studies across psychology, sociology, management and economics, we present a meta-analysis of their effects. Our findings reveal that, on average, moral reminders are effective, with an effect size (Hedge’s g) of 0.24 in a random-effects model, but with significant backfiring occurring in 12% of studies. We identify sources of heterogeneity based on disciplinary focus and design choices. Crucially, we introduce a taxonomy of moral reminders: we distinguish those that provide information on consequences, those that highlight descriptive or injunctive norms, and those that prime moral awareness. Our analysis shows that all of these instruments are effective, particularly those providing information on consequences, whereas information on injunctive norms is more likely to backfire |
| Date: | 2026–01 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:21025 |