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on Law and Economics |
| By: | Mikko Aaltonen; Martti Kaila; Emily E. Nix |
| Abstract: | This paper provides the first experimental evidence on the impact of providing a guaranteed basic income on criminal perpetration and victimization. We analyze a nationwide randomized controlled trial that provided 2, 000 unemployed individuals in Finland with an unconditional monthly payment of 560 Euros for two years (2017-2018), while 173, 222 comparable individuals remained under the existing social safety net. Using comprehensive administrative data on police reports and district court trials, we estimate precise zero effects on criminal perpetration and victimization. Point estimates are small and statistically insignificant across all crime categories. Our confidence intervals rule out reductions in perpetration of 5 percent or more for crime reports and 10 percent or more for criminal charges. |
| JEL: | I38 K42 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34547 |
| By: | Massimo Anelli; Paolo Pinotti; Zachary Porreca |
| 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. |
| Keywords: | organized crime, migration, historical persistence, neighborhood effects |
| JEL: | K42 F22 N32 R23 D02 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12364 |
| By: | Gerald Foong; Stephen Machin; Matteo Sandi; Woan Foong Wong; Steve Machin |
| Abstract: | We study whether economic incentives matter for crime in a novel way, through study of expensive precious metal thefts by thieves stealing catalytic converters. We combine sharp, plausibly exogenous variation in the prices of precious metals embedded in converters with newly assembled U.S. data and multiple research designs. We show that phenomenally fast increases in precious metal prices generated a sizeable and rapid rise in auto-part thefts, while subsequent price declines and policy responses quickly reversed this pattern. The resulting boom-and-bust dynamics provide clean evidence that both demand- and supply-side economic forces shape property crime and inform targeted deterrence policies. |
| Keywords: | expensive precious metals, auto-part theft, catalytic converters |
| JEL: | K42 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_12366 |
| By: | Naci H. Mocan; Nur Orak |
| Abstract: | The Istanbul Convention is an international treaty aimed at protecting women against violence. We employ survey datasets and investigate its effect on attitudes toward violence against women in Europe. Using difference-in-differences models we compare individuals in countries that signed and ratified the Convention with those in countries that signed but either never ratified or did so after the surveys were fielded. Entry into the Convention significantly reduced the likelihood that lower-educated individuals view violence against women as acceptable, but only in countries outside the former Eastern Bloc. In former Eastern Bloc countries, the Convention affected attitudes only among younger less-educated individuals who had limited exposure to communism—those who were no older than teenagers when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990. We show that younger cohorts in these countries tend to hold more individualistic and less pro-government attitudes and express greater trust in the courts and the justice system than older individuals. Finally, we find no effect of the Convention on attitudes toward other forms of norm-violating behavior, such as tax evasion, bribery, fare evasion, or drug use. These results indicate that the Convention had a targeted impact, and that its influence on shaping preferences depends on the broader cultural context which is itself shaped by institutions. |
| JEL: | K40 K42 P0 Z18 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34568 |
| By: | Elena Prager |
| Abstract: | Until recently, antitrust laws were rarely enforced in labor markets. Although the existence of labor market power has long been recognized, evidence only recently emerged that such market power regularly arises from sources that are actionable under antitrust law. Since 2010, antitrust agencies have substantially increased labor market enforcement actions. However, many questions relevant to enforcement remain unanswered, such as how to conduct market definition for labor markets, and how best to incorporate concentration into models of the labor market. This article reviews how antitrust is beginning to be used in labor markets, the evidence for and against its use, and the remaining evidence gaps standing in the way of more effective use. |
| JEL: | J42 K21 L4 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34572 |
| By: | Rahi Abouk; Johanna Catherine Maclean; Rosalie Liccardo Pacula |
| Abstract: | Studies show that U.S. state cannabis legalization has increased adult cannabis use, but the effects on youth use are mixed. This study considers whether omission of enforcement of the minimum legal sales age (MLSA) might help explain prior mixed findings. We combine biennial survey data for 6th, 8th, 10th, and 12th grade students from the 2010-2023 Washington Healthy Youth Survey with administrative data on premise and compliance checks from the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board (WSLCB). Premise checks educate retailers on any potential violations but do not involve penalties or fines. Compliance checks, on the other hand, involve increasing penalties imposed on retailers if they are found to be noncompliant with sales to minors. We use difference-in-differences (DID) methods that are robust to a staggered policy rollout with dynamic and heterogeneous treatment effects and assess impacts of both types of inspections on past month cannabis use. We conduct a series of sensitivity and robustness checks of the impact of both types of inspections based on student’s grade, length of time since inspection, inclusion of alcohol/tobacco retail compliance checks, and alternative measures of cannabis use. Our research suggests that the implementation of regular random compliance checks with stiff penalties on retailers for noncompliance may help reduce the influence of legal markets on youth use. Unobserved heterogeneity within and across states in the enforcement of MLSAs may contribute to mixed findings of the impact of legalization on youth cannabis use. |
| JEL: | H0 I1 K0 |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34567 |
| By: | Lorde, Troy; Pilgrim, George; Hippolyte, Antonius |
| Abstract: | This article explores the relationship between tourism development and the colonial legal inheritance of Barbados. While tourism is routinely framed as the island’s post-independence success story, the statutory regime that governs it tells a more complicated tale. Drawing on a critical legal-historical approach, the paper traces how legislation—from the Hotel Aids Act of 1956 to the Tourism Development Act of 2002 and the long-standing Land Acquisition Act—preserves the priorities and hierarchies of the plantation economy. These laws extend advantages to foreign investors, facilitate land dispossession and entrench patterns of dependency that echo earlier forms of colonial rule. By situating these statutes within broader debates on the “coloniality of law”, the analysis shows how political independence left intact a legal imagination more attuned to property, order and external capital than to equity or community empowerment. The article concludes by outlining elements of a decolonial legal strategy that centres collective rights, environmental stewardship and democratic participation in the design of future tourism policy. |
| Keywords: | coloniality of law; tourism development; savings law clause; plantation economy; legal continuity |
| JEL: | K10 N96 Z13 |
| Date: | 2025–12–17 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:127400 |
| By: | Bohne, Albrecht; Hines, James R.; Koumpias, Antonios M.; Tassi, Annalisa |
| Abstract: | The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the effect of reverse-charge mechanism (RCM) implementation on VAT compliance using an overall, countrylevel measure of VAT compliance, the VAT gap. The VAT gap is defined as the overall difference between expected and realized VAT revenues and is a broader measure than outcomes employed in previous research, incorporating all types of VAT evasion. Exploiting the staggered adoption of RCM across Europe and the size of industries targeted by RCM, we compare changes in the VAT gap before and after RCM implementation. Evidence from difference-in-differences, event study, and heterogeneous treatment effects estimators indicates that the adoption of the RCM does not lead to significant EU-wide changes on the aggregate VAT gap. Moreover, our results illustrate the mixed impacts of RCM on different goods and industries, with measurable decreases in VAT losses in the construction and industrial crops industries. This study's findings do not provide strong support for policy changes that cast the net of the RCM wider on all industries and EU member states, although bilateral coordination in RCM adoption with top trading partners may assist in curbing VAT fraud relocation. |
| Keywords: | Tax evasion, VAT, VAT gap, reverse-charge mechanism, carousel fraud |
| JEL: | H26 K42 |
| Date: | 2025 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zbw:zewdip:333928 |
| By: | Gorecki, Paul |
| Abstract: | Ireland’s national competition authority has recently increased scrutiny of mergers using Assessments (aka Statement of Objections). Despite using this approach, the authority’s 2023 determination of the proposed acquisition by Q-Park of Tazbell is fatally flawed. The authority had competition concerns in three local markets for the supply of off-street car parking spaces to the public. The transaction was cleared with remedies. The paper argues that there was no substantial lessening of competition. The remedies were inadequate. Why? Contributing factors include lack of coherence reflecting confirmation bias. Merger control can be improved by, inter alia: increasing the number of CCPC executive board members to reduce governance overload; and encouraging diverse internal views and peer review through the appointment of a chief economist. The paper forms part of a broader critical narrative of merger control in Ireland. |
| Keywords: | mergers; structural remedies; substantial lessening of competition; critical loss analysis; and Competition Act 2002; car parking. |
| JEL: | D22 D43 K21 L41 R4 |
| Date: | 2025–12–15 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:127352 |
| By: | Mahirah Mahusin (Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)); Hilmy Priliadi (Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA)) |
| Abstract: | Source code underpins digital technologies and is typically protected as commercially sensitive intellectual property. While free trade agreements (FTAs) increasingly prohibit mandatory source code disclosure as a condition for market access, governments continue to require access in specific circumstances, including regulatory oversight of algorithmic systems, conformity assessments, law enforcement, and public procurement. Across ASEAN, member states have adopted diverse approaches. These include Indonesia's public procurement requirements, Malaysia's provisions allowing access in criminal investigations, and Thailand's safeguards under trade secret law. Recent FTAs reflect a shift from broad, categorical prohibitions towards more nuanced frameworks that permit regulatory exceptions, raise questions regarding the treatment of algorithms, and preserve space for voluntary disclosure. As ASEAN advances negotiations on the Digital Economy Framework Agreement (DEFA), source code provisions will need to strike a careful balance between protecting innovation and maintaining regulatory and judicial flexibility. This Policy Brief recommends affirming baseline prohibitions on forced disclosure, clearly safeguarding legitimate government access, clarifying the treatment of algorithms, protecting voluntary disclosure, and addressing implications for public procurement. Latest Articles |
| Date: | 2025–12–31 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:era:wpaper:pb-2025-15 |
| By: | Michal Koles\'ar; Jos\'e Luis Montiel Olea; Jonathan Roth |
| Abstract: | We study settings in which a researcher has an instrumental variable (IV) and seeks to evaluate the effects of a counterfactual policy that alters treatment assignment, such as a directive encouraging randomly assigned judges to release more defendants. We develop a general and computationally tractable framework for computing sharp bounds on the effects of such policies. Our approach does not require the often tenuous IV monotonicity assumption. Moreover, for an important class of policy exercises, we show that IV monotonicity -- while crucial for a causal interpretation of two-stage least squares -- does not tighten the bounds on the counterfactual policy impact. We analyze the identifying power of alternative restrictions, including the policy invariance assumption used in the marginal treatment effect literature, and develop a relaxation of this assumption. We illustrate our framework using applications to quasi-random assignment of bail judges in New York City and prosecutors in Massachusetts. |
| Date: | 2025–12 |
| URL: | https://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:arx:papers:2512.24096 |