The economic literature on enforcement is generally pessimistic concerning the use of legal aid. In this paper we show that legal aid can be a part of optimal law enforcement. The rationale behind our result is that with legal aid, in a system with legal or judicial error both guilty and...

Mandatory prosecution is inefficient according to legal economists. We argue that when prosecutors are fairly insulated from their performance or are highly risk averse mandatory prosecution is better than selective prosecution. This result has important implications for comparative law since...

This paper considers why some harm-generating activities are controlled by criminal law and criminal sanctions while others are subject to some other mechanism such as civil law, administrative law, regulation or the tax system. It looks at the question from the perspective of the law and...

This paper examines the use of business strategies by firms of solicitors in England. Although still often seen as the epitome of the traditional profession, recent deregulation and liberalization of the legal services market has forced solicitors to consider the use of more business-like...

Empirical evidence shows that vertically integrated producers are more productive, bigger and are matched to better suppliers (with high productivity and size). I present a dynamic stochastic model of an industry with heterogeneous firms interacting as buyers and sellers, and market frictions...

This paper provides an empirical study of the determinants of income inequality across regions of the EU. Using the European Community Household Panel data-set for 102 regions over the period 1995-2000, it analyses how micro-economic changes in human capital distribution affect income inequality...