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 deterring illegal...

This paper studies the deterrent effect of criminal enforcement on white-collar criminal activities. Using the 9/11 terrorist attacks as a shock to the FBI's allocation of investigative resources and priorities, and variations in the Muslim population in the United States as a measure of...

This paper analyzes the impact of changes in regulatory priorities and resource allocation on criminal enforcement of white‐collar criminal activities. Using the 9/11 terrorist attacks as a shock to the FBI's priorities and allocation of investigative resources, as well as variation in the...

We exploit staggered municipality-level anti-mafia enforcement actions over the 1995–2015 period in Italy to study the effect of organized crime on firms. Following anti-mafia enforcement actions, we find increases in competition among firms, innovation activity, and competition for public...

In this paper, I assess the causal effects of judicial administration on a sample of Italian criminal firms in the period 2004-2016, to shed light on the dynamic path of the firm's performance from pre-seizure to the post-entry judicial administration phase. By using exogenous enforcement law...

This paper puts into perspective enforcement as conducted by the French Financial Market Authority since its creation in 2003 until 2021 with regards to the current state of the literature on financial crimes. We survey exhaustively the three main channels of action: sanctions, settlements...

Over a million people in the United States are employed in private security and law enforcement, yet very little is known about the effects of private police on crime. The current study examines the relationship between a privately-funded university police force and crime in a large U.S. city....

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...

We estimate a structural model of borrowing and lending in the illegal money lending market using a unique panel survey of 1,090 borrowers taking out 11,032 loans from loan sharks. We use the model to evaluate the welfare effects of alternative law enforcement strategies. We find that a large...

Local governments suspected of Mafia infiltration can be dismissed in Italy through an administrative act not increasing formal deterrence but potentially signaling improved law enforcement among local communities. This paper finds that dismissals are associated to a persistent fall of petty...