Using a suitably modified locational model of banking, we examine the influence of institutions, such as deposit contract enforcement, in explaining the share of government owned banks in the banking system. We present cross-country evidence suggesting that institutional factors are relatively...

In this paper we consider amoral taxpayers who access amoral tax preparers in order to receive help in evading taxes. Taxpayers are aware of having a biased perception of the audit probability, but are unable to correct such bias without the help of a tax preparer. The market for tax...

Spanish Abstract: Las ciudades de Colombia mantienen índices altos de delito a pesar del aumento del gasto en defensa y seguridad. Este trabajo propone y analiza la provisión de información como una estrategia de bajo costo que puede ser efectiva para la disuasión del crimen. Para mostrar su...

The non-fiction book, “Extraordinary Circumstances: The Journey of a Corporate Whistleblower,” by Cynthia Cooper is employed in an upper-level undergraduate auditing class at a Canadian University to teach accounting students about the importance of ethical behavior and to improve students'...

Just as employers face uncertainty when hiring workers, workers also face uncertainty when accepting employment, and bad employers may opportunistically depart from expectations, norms, and laws. However, prior research in economics and information sciences has focused sharply on the employer's...

This paper examines whether fraud allegations affect firms' contracting with the government. Using a dataset of whistleblower allegations brought under the False Claims Act against firms accused of defrauding the government, we find that federal agencies do not reduce the total dollar volume of...

This article explores the extent to which social capital theory can respond to the crisis in the subprime mortgage markets. Building on the groundbreaking theories of Robert Putnam in his book BOWLING ALONE: THE COLLAPSE AND REVIVAL OF AMERICAN COMMUNITY, this article seeks to explore the role...

We analyze the interactions between social norms, the prevalence of regulated acts, and policies. These interactions are impacted by people's inability to directly observe actors' behavior. Norms are ineffective incentivizers when acts are committed either very frequently or very infrequently,...

I use the standard screening model to study the relationship between bribes and red tape. I argue that bribe-taking bureaucrats extract bribes by exploiting differences in firms' marginal costs of red tape and offer a menu of bribes and paperwork processing times, where a larger bribe is...

In three experiments, we examine how an employer reputation system disciplines an online labor market (Amazon Mechanical Turk) in which employers may decline to pay workers while keeping their work product. These three experiments test the value of the employer reputation system for workers,...