We propose a forensic approach to investigate the politico-economic forces that influence narrow vote outcomes in legislative assemblies. Applying nonparametric estimation techniques to a data set covering all roll call votes between 1990 and 2014, we can identify the existence of precise...

Criminal law enforcement depends on the actions of public agents such as police officers, but the resulting agency problems have been neglected in the law and economics literature (especially outside the specific context of corruption). We develop an agency model of police behavior that...

In a Case Law regime Courts have more flexibility than in a Statute Law regime. Since Statutes are inevitably incomplete, this confers an advantage to the Statute Law regime over the Case Law one. However, all Courts rule ex-post, after most economic decisions are already taken. Therefore, the...

This paper analyzes the incentive properties of the standard and burden of proof for a finding of negligence, when evidence is imperfect and rests with the parties. We show that the preponderance of evidence' standard provides maximal incentives to exert care. This holds even though litigants...

Historically, people have often expressed negative feelings toward speculators, a sentiment that might have even been reinforced since the latest financial crisis, during which taxpayer money was warranted or spent to bail out reckless investors. In this paper, we conjecture that judges may also...

We investigate the elasticity of moral ignorance with respect to monetary incentives and social norm information. We propose that individuals suffer from higher moral costs when rejecting a certain donation, and thus pay for moral ignorance. Consistent with our model, we find significant...

We theoretically analyse the relationship between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and tax avoidance of an oligopolistic firm. The firm maximises a weighted sum of profits and a CSR objective which depends on output and the firm's contribution to public good provision, i.e. tax payments....

We study the occurrence of holdout litigation in the context of sovereign defaults. The number of creditor lawsuits against foreign governments has strongly increased over the past decades, but there is a large variation across crisis events. Why are some defaults followed by a "run to the...

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) is a very powerful court compared to other international courts and even national courts of last resort. Observers almost unanimously agree that it is the preliminary references procedure that made the ECJ the powerful court it is today. In this paper, we...