We exploit the Collective Clemency Bill passed by the Italian Parliament in July 2006 to evaluate the indirect effects of a policy that randomly commutes actual sentences to expected sentences for 40 percent of the Italian prison population. We estimate the direct and indirect impact of the...

In recent decades, women’s participation in the labor market has increased considerably in most countries and is converging toward the participation rate of men. Though on a lesser scale, a similar movement toward gender convergence seems to be occurring in the criminal world, though many...

At a time in which behavioural science has gained increasing attention for the design of population-wide health interventions, this chapter discusses its potential contributions to the prevention and control of Non-Communicable-Diseases (NCDs). Given the largely preventable nature of NCDs, any...

This paper outlines the foundations of corporate governance.  The discussion includes a review on the modern corporation, transaction costs theory, agency costs theory, legal investor protection, investor protection by corporate governance and its various mechanisms, as well as an overview of...

Romanian agriculture is closely related to Romanian village life and is defined as the creatures and the whole of eternity. To think that there is little work to invest in land fertility, agricultural durability invest without having in mind that in Romania the whole eternity of mankind was born...

Why do people postpone the choice of a new telecommunication supplier or bank which offers better conditions? Why choose clearly risky investments? These and many other examples of departures from rational choices, so-called biases in judgment, question the assumption that people and firms are...

The recent Italian Bankruptcy Reform (d.lgs. 9 gennaio 2006, n. 5) has been adopted to modify the old insolvency system, existing since 1942, in order to facilitate the resolution of firms' distress through the implementation of faster insolvency procedures and an increasing adoption of the...

Behavioral approach is nowadays one most prominent field within law and economics literature. Applying bias and heuristics to the law draws new insights and mechanisms on the role and functions of law in society. By studying Sunstein?s works on this topic, we argue that two different normative...

How did modern and centralized fiscal institutions emerge? We develop a model that explains (i) why pre-industrial states relied on private individuals to collect taxes; (ii) why after 1600 both England and France moved from competitive methods for collecting revenues to allocating the right to...

All men are created equal, but all liabilities are not. Some liabilities are more equal than others. These "financial liabilities" are products of financial firms. These products shift risk (insurance or derivatives) or provide liquidity (bank deposits or repurchase agreements). Since these...