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on Law and Economics |
| By: | Rui Costa; Olivia Masi; Beatriz Ribeiro; Matteo Sandi |
| Abstract: | Can criminal law prevent domestic violence and change how victims use the state? We study Brazil’s 2015 recognition of femicide as qualified homicide using ten years of linked population, police, hospital, and prison records for 2.6 million women. Exploiting predetermined municipal exposure to men with histories of violence against women, we find that police-recorded non-fatal domestic violence fell disproportionately in more exposed areas. Conditional on an incident reaching police, requests for protective measures rose, while pursuit of charges did not. Legal recognition at the lethal endpoint can therefore affect both violence below that margin and survivors’ choice of state remedy. |
| Keywords: | violence against women, femicide, protection, prosecution |
| JEL: | K14 K42 J12 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12956 |
| By: | Hey, Florian; Budzinski, Oliver |
| Abstract: | We develop a sequential game-theoretic model to analyze the compliance incentives of digital gatekeepers under the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA). A gatekeeper chooses between full compliance and strategic compliance - a strategy of tactical, superficially lawful implementation that preserves a larger share of monopoly rents. The European Commission decides whether to accept the gatekeeper's compliance or initiate enforcement proceedings. Using backward induction, we show that in high-impact markets, the gatekeeper's equilibrium strategy is strategic compliance, investing in legal complexity to deter enforcement. In low-impact markets, full compliance is the equilibrium outcome. We extend the base model by endogenizing the Commission's enforcement incentives, modeled as increasing in the fine imposed, and derive conditions under which raising fines may paradoxically fail to induce full compliance. The model contributes to an emerging literature on regulatory compliance in digital markets and identifies the negotiation-oriented nature of DMA enforcement as a key determinant of strategic gatekeeper behavior. |
| Keywords: | antitrust, Digital Markets Act (DMA), gatekeeper, platform regulation, strategic compliance |
| JEL: | C72 K20 K21 L40 L51 L86 M21 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:tuiedp:343557 |
| By: | Rafat Mahmood and Pushkar Maitra |
| Abstract: | Natural disasters are a growing global threat, yet their consequences for gender-based violence (GBV) in high-income countries with strong institutional protections remain largely unknown. We address this gap using administrative crime records linked to disaster declarations at the Local Government Area level in Australia. Applying staggered difference-in-differences estimation techniques, we find that disasters cause short-run increase family, domestic and sexual violence with effects concentrated in the first one to three months following a disaster. Strikingly, these effects are larger in urban and affluent areas, an outcome that is difficult to reconcile with a pure economic-stress mechanism, and is more consistent with institutional strain and differential reporting environments. To probe the underlying pathway, we draw on complementary household survey evidence, which points to mental health deterioration and increased intra-household conflict as individual level mechanisms. Together, our findings suggest that even well-resourced institutional settings offer only incomplete protection against disaster-induced violence against women |
| Keywords: | Natural Disasters, gender based Violence, Event Study, Australia |
| JEL: | Q54 J12 J16 I18 K42 |
| Date: | 2026–09–08 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mos:moswps:paper_1789340702041_877 |
| By: | Breide, Lukas; Budzinski, Oliver; Mendelsohn, Juliane; Stöhr, Annika |
| Abstract: | This paper develops four proposals to modernize merger control in the European Union and beyond. First, merger control should be reinforced and reinvigorated to prevent the further rising of market power and to stop the ongoing decline of competition intensity. Second, the analysis highlights the need to incorporate systemic and cross-market power into both market definition and competitive assessment. Third, it challenges the traditional presumption that non-horizontal mergers are generally less harmful than horizontal ones, showing that vertical and conglomerate integration may reinforce ecosystem power and foreclose innovation. Finally, the paper proposes the use of rebuttable presumptions to address procedural asymmetries and under-enforcement. Together, these reforms would align merger control with contemporary economic research on digital ecosystems and enhance its capacity to safeguard contestability, innovation, and dynamic competition. |
| Keywords: | merger control, merger guidelines, concentration, systemic market power, digital ecosystems, competition policy, market definition, rebuttable presumptions, competitiveness |
| JEL: | K21 L40 L51 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:tuiedp:343555 |
| By: | Xiaofeng Gong; Yuling Han; Susan T. Parker; Matthew B. Ross; Stephen Ross |
| Abstract: | We establish a reliable counterfactual for evaluating racial disparities in traffic stops using telemetric data to estimate the racial composition of motorists. We measure of motorist racial composition using telemetric mobility data and a novel two-stage correction methodology anchored by an independent measure, racial composition of motorists involved in accidents. Applying this to Massachusetts State Police stops, we find non-White motorists are stopped at rates exceeding their roadway presence by 6.7 percentage points. We demonstrate that uncalibrated telemetric data significantly understates minority presence (15.2 vs. 28 percent), and the uncalibrated telemetric data yields disparities that are over twice the size of our preferred estimates. We use this validated measure to assess the accuracy of several commonly-used disparity tests. We find that the widely used “Community Standard” test dramatically overestimates disparities, even when restricting to local roads or non-commuting hours. In contrast, the less-often used “Crash Benchmark” accurately captures disparities even when aggregated to higher temporal levels covering up to 94 percent of stops. Finally, the “Veil of Darkness” test yields smaller estimates than our telemetric measure, consistent with its focus on disparate treatment rather than the broader legal standard of motorist composition. |
| JEL: | C81 J15 K42 R41 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35727 |
| By: | Ghosh, Rudrani |
| Abstract: | Most research on violence against women in India depends on administrative police records. However, this raw data often suffers from severe reporting biases and fails to account for massive population differences between districts. To address these flaws, this study applies causal inference, hierarchical modeling, and machine learning to better understand local crime dynamics. By combining two decades of National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) statistics with 2011 Census demographics, we map both the spatial distribution and the true sociological drivers of this violence. We found no evidence of geographic clustering; a Moran's I analysis shows the violence is distributed randomly across the country. Furthermore, our mixed-effects hierarchical models indicate that broad state-level policies explain less than 1% of the variance in local crime rates. Furthermore, by applying Pearl's do-calculus and Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs), we isolate the causal effects of the male-female literacy gap and urbanization, proving that urbanization is the dominant driver of reporting rates. A Bayesian Structural Time Series (BSTS) correctly isolates the passage of the 2013 Criminal Law (Amendment) Act as an administrative reporting shock yielding an 88, 879 annual case surge rather than a behavioral epidemic. Finally, Bayesian Belief Networks are utilized to model highly nonlinear sociological interactions, providing a mathematical framework for proactive risk assessment. |
| Date: | 2026–09–11 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:osf:socarx:4fxsm_v2 |
| By: | Budzinski, Oliver |
| Abstract: | A series of high-profile judgments of the European Court of Justice has recently emphasized the anticompetitive character of many regulatory interventions of sports associations (like UEFA) into the sports markets they are governing. This has led to widespread calls for reforms and changes. However, given the special characteristics of sports requiring a market-internal regulator to set, implement, and enforce the common rules of the game, a somewhat neglected question is how regulatory interventions by sports associations can look like in the future in order to avoid violating competition rules. This paper develops a framework for regulatory activities by sports governing bodies (like UEFA) that stands in line even with ambitious interpretations of the judgments. It uses the Royal Antwerpen case about regulations to promote homegrown talent as an example. However, the developed framework may be applied for virtually all regulatory interventions by sports associations. |
| Keywords: | football, sports economics, sport law, governance, competition, Royal Antwerp case, homegrown talent, market-internal regulator |
| JEL: | Z20 K21 L83 J01 J08 J49 Z22 Z23 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:tuiedp:343553 |
| By: | Ezra, Dvir Aviam |
| Abstract: | Proxy voting policies are documents used by fiduciaries to outline how institutional shareholders use their voting power in corporate votes within their portfolio companies. These policies govern tens of trillions of dollars of assets under management (AUM) in the U.S. alone. 2 However, they occupy an unstable legal position. They are treated primarily as disclosure documents but operate as private regulatory instruments. This article develops the first doctrinal taxonomy of proxy voting policies, evaluating their functions as disclosure instruments, internal guidelines, contractual undertakings, and as private regulation. This analysis is supplemented by an empirical review of disclosures of proxy voting policies showing substantial heterogeneity in disclosure quality, presence of boilerplate language, reliance on proxy advisers, and uneven substantive guidance.3 This article argues that current law under-regulates PVPs because it focuses on discretionary disclosure while ignoring their norm-setting powers. It proposes a tiered regulatory model based on proportionality and democratic legitimacy to enhance disclosure, compliance and accountability. |
| Keywords: | Disclosure Regulations, Proxy Voting, Corporate Governance, Financial Regulation, Behavioural Finance, Information Processing, Stewardship, Fiduciary Duties |
| JEL: | K22 K23 G23 G34 G38 G40 D82 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:safewp:343536 |
| By: | Färber, Nina Lena; Hey, Florian |
| Abstract: | Article 5(2) of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) prohibits gatekeepers from combining personal data across core platform services unless end users consent within the meaning of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This paper argues that importing the GDPR's consent standard into a competition-driven provision produces a structurally mismatched regulatory design. Drawing on competition economics, we examine the underlying data combination rent and show that this rent, rather than raw data volume, constitutes the primary source of gatekeeper dominance. This rent is economically ambivalent: pro-competitive where combined data improves products, anti-competitive where it serves surplus extraction. Yet Article 5(2) DMA faces user-related constraints for acknowledging its economic ambivalence, because it rather restricts what is harmful only conditionally. We demonstrate that consent, when applied in markets characterized by pronounced power asymmetries, generates predictable welfare losses: entrenching incumbents, fragmenting data ecosystems, and reducing consumer welfare without effectively constraining the rent it targets. In particular, we argue that data-based payment constitutes an economically distinctive mode of exchange that, unlike monetary payment, does not directly deplete disposable income. The resulting two-fold regulatory impasse implies that neither widespread consent nor widespread refusal advances market contestability or data sovereignty. In response, we assess alternatives, including data fiduciaries, data intermediaries, and portability-based data markets, that target the data combination rent more directly. None dominates on all margins. The choice among imperfect institutions is comparative. We conclude that, if data combination is to be governed at all, effective regulation requires instruments calibrated to the economic structure of data-driven markets rather than to the individual autonomy framework of data protection regulation. |
| Keywords: | Competition Policy, Consent, Data Combination, Data Sovereignty, Digital Markets Act (DMA), Gatekeepers, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Platform Regulation |
| JEL: | K21 L40 L51 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:tuiedp:343556 |
| By: | Adriano Amati (ETH Zürich); Monica Billio (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice); Marco Di Cataldo (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice; London School of Economics); Giovanni Mastrobuoni (Collegio Carlo Alberto) |
| Abstract: | Learned representations have transformed the measurement of unstructured data in economics. We extend it to relational data, showing that Temporal Graph Networks encode economically meaningful behavior in dynamic corporate ownership networks. Using a high-resolution Italian ownership graph anchored on 5, 700 judicially confiscated firms, we train a TGN that is never supervised on confiscation to produce time-varying firm embeddings, and we summarize their geometry with an Infiltration Proximity Index (IPI): a real-time measure of how densely a firm’s latent neighborhood is populated by firms whose confiscation is already legally known. We validate the index along three dimensions. It forecasts confiscation out of sample up to four years ahead, with a higher area under the ROC curve than the full set of firm-level financial variables at every horizon and for every classifier, and with far fewer missed confiscations at the cost of flagging more firms that are never confiscated; the geometry it summarizes places firms confiscated only later closer to firms already confiscated at the time of measurement; and it responds coherently to local changes in ownership. We then use the index to date firms’ transitions into a high-risk regime in a staggered difference-in-differences design. Around the dated transition, firms display sharp scale expansion, rising liabilities and receivables, cost reallocation, and persistent illiquidity, with only temporary profit gains, patterns consistent with firms operating as conduits for financial flows rather than as profit maximizers. |
| Keywords: | corporate network, organized crime, infiltration, graph neural networks, embeddings |
| JEL: | C45 C55 D85 L1 K42 L25 G32 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ven:wpaper:2026:24 |
| By: | Tomasz Piskorski; Amit Seru; Jian Zhang; Chun Zhao |
| Abstract: | We study whether pro-integrity social norms can substitute for formal enforcement in deterring misconduct by public officials. Singapore, widely regarded as one of the world’s least corrupt countries, provides a sharp setting to examine whether decades of successful anti-corruption enforcement can produce self-sustaining norms. Using universe-level housing transactions, we identify informed home purchases by civil servants around expansions of the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system. Relative to a matched uninformed control, civil servants disproportionately purchase homes near planned—but not yet publicly announced—stations, with the effect concentrated one to two years before public announcements. The behavior is concentrated among mid-level officials and agencies connected to rail planning, generates meaningful private gains, and also appears among relatives, consistent with information leakage. Stronger formal enforcement substantially reduces both direct and indirect misconduct. We combine the transaction evidence with independent survey measures of perceived corruption, public trust, and pro-integrity norms and develop a dynamic model in which norms are persistent but fragile, enforcement both directly deters misconduct and indirectly sustains norms, and policymakers learn about the persistence of norms from noisy integrity signals. Observed pre-tightening misconduct, deterioration in survey-based integrity measures, and the subsequent decline in misconduct following stronger enforcement are more consistent with policymakers learning that norms have limited persistence than with a response to transitory noise. The findings suggest that even in high-integrity societies, social norms may not be sufficiently self-sustaining to maintain a low-corruption equilibrium without continued formal enforcement. |
| JEL: | E59 G14 G18 K29 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35756 |
| By: | Lori A. Beaman; Seema Jayachandran; Anisha Sharma |
| Abstract: | Gender-based harassment in public spaces affects women directly through victimization and indirectly through fear. We measure these dual effects in urban India, where harassment is widely regarded as pervasive. Surveying over 4, 000 women recruited in public spaces in New Delhi and Bengaluru, we document that 65% of women in New Delhi and 29% in Bengaluru experienced harassment in public spaces in the past year. Past-year prevalence of groping, stalking, or sexual assault is 41% in New Delhi and 14% in Bengaluru. Both frequent, less severe forms of harassment and rarer, more severe forms generate anxiety among women; for example, 46% of women in New Delhi and 25% in Bengaluru report feeling extremely anxious about sexual assault when in public spaces. Not all of the indirect effects track the across-city variation in experienced harassment: in both cities, roughly 70\% of women report that fear of harassment affects whether they work. Finally, on measurement, we show that measured prevalence is more sensitive to questionnaire design where harassment is less common and victims have fewer and less recent incidents to recall. |
| JEL: | J16 K42 O12 |
| Date: | 2026–09 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:35738 |
| By: | Hey, Florian |
| Abstract: | The European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA) introduces significant transparency obligations regarding price and performance measurement for digital gatekeepers. This paper provides a theoretical economic analysis of these provisions, evaluating them against the ongoing debate on whether advertising is welfare-enhancing (informative) or socially wasteful (persuasive). The analysis suggests that while the DMA effectively targets information asymmetries and the so-called ad tech tax to foster market contestability and fairness, it remains agnostic to the normative implications of the advertising model itself. The paper argues that by lowering costs for advertisers without addressing the persuasive nature of advertising, the regulation risks fueling a zero-sum game, leading to a higher equilibrium volume of socially wasteful advertising. Thus, the respective DMA rules contribute to rent redistribution within the advertising sector rather than mitigating the systematic inefficiencies of an over-advertised digital economy. This suggests that structural or fiscal alternatives may be more appropriate to resolve these issues and their wider implications for the digital economy. |
| Keywords: | Ad Tech, Competition Policy, Digital Markets Act (DMA), Digital Advertising, Gatekeepers, Platform Regulation, Welfare Economics |
| JEL: | K21 L40 L51 L86 M38 |
| Date: | 2026 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:tuiedp:343552 |