Increasing penalty structures for repeat offenses are ubiquitous in penal codes, despite little empirical or theoretical support. Multi-period models of criminal enforcement based on the standard economic approach of Becker (1968) generally find that the optimal penalty structure is either flat...

We explore three hitherto poorly understood characteristics of the human trafficking market – the cross-border ease of mobility of traffickers, the relative bargaining strength of traffickers and final buyers, and the elasticity of buyers' demand. In a model of two-way bargaining, the exact...

We estimate the "incapacitation effect" on crime using variation in Italian prison population driven by eight collective pardons passed between 1962 and 1995. The prison releases are sudden – within one day –, very large – up to 35 percent of the entire prison population – and happen...

During the transition from plan to market, managers and politicians succeeded in maintaining control of large parts of the stock of socialist physical capital. Despite the obvious importance of this phenomenon, there have been no efforts to model, measure and investigate this process...

In this paper we test for the theory of deterrence. We exploit the natural experiment provided by the Collective Clemency Bill passed by the Italian Parliament in July 2006. As a consequence of the provisions of the bill, expected punishment to former inmates recommitting a crime can be...

We study the consequences of leniency - reduced legal sanctions for wrongdoers who spontaneously self-report to law enforcers - on sequential, bilateral, illegal transactions such as corruption, manager-auditor collusion, or drug deals. It is known that leniency helps to deter illegal...

We review current methods for calculating fines against cartels in the US and EU, and simulate their deterrence effects under different assumptions on the legal and economic environment. It is likely that European fines have not had significant deterrence effects before leniency programs were...

We analyze optimal policy design when firms' research activity may lead to socially harmful innovations. Public intervention, affecting the expected profitability of innovation, may both thwart the incentives to undertake research (average deterrence) and guide the use to which innovation is put...

In this paper we test for the theory of deterrence. We exploit the natural experiment provided by the Collective Clemency Bill passed by the Italian Parliament in July 2006. As a consequence of the provisions of the bill, expected punishment to former inmates recommitting a crime can be...

Our study is based on the traditional Becker-Ehrlich deterrence model, but we analyse the model in the face of currently discussed factors of crime like demographic changes, youth-unemployment and income inequality. We use a panel of the German Laender (states) that allows us to exploit...