This paper argues that corruption patterns are endogenous to political structures. Thus, corruption can be systemic and planned rather than decentralized and coincidental. In an economic system without law or property rights, a kleptocratic state may arise as a predatory hierarchy from a state...

Two recent failures of the United States intelligence system have led to thecreation of high-level investigative commissions. The failure to prevent theterrorist attacks of 9/11 prompted the creation of the 9/11 Commission, andthe mistaken belief that Saddam Hussein had retained weapons of...

This paper reviews the literature on the economics of intellectual property rights (IPR), with a particular focus on the main industrial property rights of patents and trade marks. Intellectual property rights arise from the legal protection accorded to certain inventions or creations. We begin...

This paper analyzes the incentive properties of the standard and burden of proof for a finding of negligence, when evidence about injurers' behavior is imperfect and rests with the parties. We show that the `preponderance of evidence' standard used in common law, together with ordinary exclusion...

We argue that the common-law standard of proof, given the rulesof evidence, does not minimize expected error as usually argued inthe legal literature, but may well be e±cient from the standpointof providing maximal incentives for socially desirable behavior.By contrast, civil law's higher but...

Intellectual property rights are legal constraints that limit entry in industries where incumbentsare innovators. The set of legal constraints is the same for all industries, withoutconsidering that the externalities created by entry are not necessarily negative for the incumbentor that the...

In the experiment two bureaucrats independently can grant a permit with the profit of the private party depending on when the permit is given. Whereas one bureaucrat can only veto the project, the second one has additional discretion in granting the permit earlier or later. (...)

This paper analyses how tax morale and countries´ institutional quality affect the shadoweconomy, controlling in a multivariate analysis for a variety of potential factors. The literaturestrongly emphasizes the quantitative importance of these factors to understand the level andchanges of...

This paper analyses how governance or institutional quality and tax morale affect the shadoweconomy, using an international country panel and also within country data...

Die Governance der Zentralbanken hat zwei Dimensionen: Corporate Governance und Public Governance. Public Governance ist ein institutioneller Rahmen, wobei die breite Öffentlichkeit eine Zentralbank regelt durch und durch die Legislative und Exekutive in einem Land. Dieses Papier argumentiert,...