De juridische bescherming van banken en aandeelhouders beïnvloedt de omvang en kwaliteit van het financiële systeem en daarmee de economische groei. Gebrekkige (juridische) instituties in transitie-economieën kunnen de economische ontwikkeling van deze landen dan ook afremmen. Zo dragen...

The aim of this paper is to investigate the existence of a spatial dependence of crime rates at a local level in the case of municipalities of Minas Gerais, one of the 26 Brazilian states. Results suggest the existence of a positive spatial autocorrelation of municipal violent crime rates....

We examine the extent, causes and consequences of the use of foreign currency as a co-circulating medium of exchange and store of value in Latin America. Using new estimates of the amount of foreign currency in circulation in the form of US dollars, we obtain unique measures of currency...

We develop a moral hazard model with auditing where both the principal and the agent can influence the probability that the true state of nature is verified. This setting is widely applicable for situations where fraudulent reporting with costly state verification takes place. However, we use...

This paper investigates multi-item moral hazard with auditing contests. Although the presented model is widely applicable, we choose tax evasion as an exemplary application. We introduce a tax-evasion model where tax authority and taxpayer invest in detection and concealment. The taxpayers have...

Corruption has a negative impact on society and economy. The transition process in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) uncovered dormant possibilities for corruption and necessity for appropriate steps to be taken. We document the state of corruption in the Czech Republic and the measures...

The rising trends both in drug addiction and crime rates are of major public concern in Germany. Surprisingly, the economic theory of crime seems to ignore the drugs-crime nexus, whereas the criminological literature considers illicit drug use a main reason of criminal activities. This paper...

Judicial Independence (JI) as factually implemented varies considerably between countries. Since de iure JI is an imperfect predictor of de facto JI, a number of variables that might determine the factual level of judicial independence is theoretically discussed and empirically tested. A...

Applying the modern Property Rights Approach to depict employment and firm-internal delegation relationships, this paper addresses the question how to prevent corporate bribery. The analysis and the answers that follow take into account interaction effects between firm-internal delegation...

A current U.S. policy is to introduce a new style of currency that is harder to counterfeit, but not immediately to withdrawal from circulation all of the old-style currency. This policy is analyzed in a random-matching model of money, and its potential to decrease counterfeiting in the long run...