Increasing penalty structures for repeat offenses are ubiquitous in penal codes, despite little empirical or theoretical support. Multi-period models of criminal enforcement based on the standard economic approach of Becker (1968) generally find that the optimal penalty structure is either flat...

We test the overarching hypothesis that financial institutions face relatively milder fines due to financial stability concerns. To do so, we use an event study approach on a sample of 441 listed cartel members prosecuted by the European Commission between 1998 and June 2020. Our results suggest...

Numerous arguments have been raised to halt the death penalty, including constitutional claims such as ineffective assistance of counsel, equal protection, right to trial by jury, and cruel and unusual punishment. The winning argument, however, in Evans v. State, a Maryland death penalty appeal,...

Section 102 of the Sentencing Act 2002 gives judges' only limited discretion when sentencing for stage-1 murder: the discretion to rebut the presumption of life imprisonment in circumstances where the sentence would otherwise be “manifestly unjust”. This is a high threshold, and the Court of...

Research on the statutory license for certain types of copyright-protected content has revealed an unlikely symbiosis between uncertainty and efficiency. Contrary to received wisdom, which tells us that in order to increase efficiency, we must increase stability, this Article will show that...

Fines and damages are the principal sanctions of criminal, civil and regulatory law. Yet in law it does not matter who pays money sanctions. Damages overwhelmingly are paid by insurers and the cost of insurance premiums loaded into commodity prices and thus dispersed among consumers. Fines are...

We conduct laboratory experiments to investigate the effect of deterrence mechanisms on recidivism under controlled conditions. Experimental analysis allows for easier identification of recidivism than the use of empirical or field data. Specifically, we focus on the effect of variation in...

At the time of his death, the works of German philosopher Friedrich W. Nietzsche (1844 - 1900) were not widely-read and he himself had slipped into a catatonic state, being put on display by his family as somewhat of a freak. By 1939, his ideas had been distorted and misappropriated to justify...

In this paper, we study the effects of social influence on third-parties' decisions whether to engage in costly, decentralized punishment. We elicit punishment decisions both in isolation and after providing information about actual peers' punishment. We find evidence that the amount of...

Multiperiod models of criminal enforcement based on the standard economic approach of Becker (1968) generally find that the optimal penalty structure is either flat or declining. We present the first experimental test of a two‐stage theoretical model that predicts decreasing penalty structures...