Abstract : Abuse and neglect of older adults (« elder abuse ») has a significant impact on the lives of the individuals involved. At the same time, it has a broader social and economic cost. Many of these are « hidden costs » in the sense that the cause of the underlying problem is not...

This paper analyzes a simple model that captures the relationship between institutional quality, the shadow economy and corruption. It shows that an improvement in institutional quality reduces the shadow economy and affects the corruption market. The exact relationship between corruption and...

The causes and consequences of corruption have attracted much attention in recent years by both academics and policy makers. Central in the discussion on the impact of corruption are perception-based indices. While informative, these indices are ordinal in nature and hence provide no indication...

This paper reviews the empirical literature on the economic costs of corruption. Corruption affects economic growth, the level of GDP per capita, investment activity, international trade and price stability negatively. Additionally, it biases the composition of government expenditures. The...

By reinterpreting Savage axioms as axioms of the social rationality over resource allocations, we derive a social welfare function encompassing individual social values and a social attitude towards distributional inequality. Wealth maximization becomes the purpose of law only if individuals...

In the financial crisis literature, it is usually argued that, contrary to the case of currency crises, building a time series index to identify banking crisis episodes is highly difficult, particularly because of the lack of reliable data on banking sector variables (non-performing loans,...

The goal of our empirical analysis is to assess whether the changes in cigarette excise taxes and cigarette prices can be attributed to litigation brought by the states and the resulting settlements, holding other factors constant. Using pre-post as well as state excise taxes on beer as...

Americans drive 2,360,000,000,000 miles each year, far outstripping other nations. Every time a driver takes to the road, and with each mile she drives, she exposes herself and others to the risk of accident. Insurance premiums are only weakly linked to mileage, however and have largely lump-sum...

[Forthcoming in Brookings Papers on Economic Activity] We analyse the major economic issues raised by the 1997 Tobacco Resolution and the ensuing proposed legislation that were intended to settle tobacco litigation in the United States. By settling litigation largely in return for tax increases,...

Nigeria is going through a difficult political and economic transition after decades of independence.Yet, Nigeria remains a society rich in cultural, linguistic, religious, ethnic and political diversity. Today, the average Nigerian struggles hard to make ends meet; sees himself or herself as...