This article introduces a novel database that measures governments' compliance with national constitutions. It combines information on de jure constitutional rules with data on their de facto implementation. The individual compliance indicators can be grouped into four categories that we...

Judges are human beings. Is their behavior therefore subject to the same effects that psychology and behavioral economics have documented for convenience samples, like university students? Does that fact that they decide on behalf of third parties moderate their behavior? In which ways does the...

Objective This paper considers the influence of female legislators on gun legislation across US states. Females have behavioral differences from males and likely different exposure to gun-related violence. Method Using data from 1991-2020, we econometrically estimate the drivers of gun...

Spontaneous norms, or simply norms, can be defined as rules of conduct that emerge without intentional design and in the absence of purposeful external coordination. While the law and economics scholarship has formally analyzed spontaneous norms, the analysis has typically been limited to...

Several studies provide evidence that heat is positively associated with criminal activity. However, the empirical literature does not provide conclusive evidence about the effect of high temperature on homicides. I examine 156 estimates from 20 studies on the relationship between temperature...

In this paper we apply an augmented Lagrange method to a class of semilinear elliptic optimal control problems with pointwise state constraints. We show strong convergence of subsequences of the primal variables to a local solution of the original problem as well as weak convergence of the...

We analyze a client's choice of contract in auctions where Dutch law firms compete for routine cases. The distinguishing feature here is that lawyers may submit bids with any fee arrangement they prefer: an hourly rate, a fixed fee or a mixed fee, which is a time-capped fixed fee plus an hourly...

The number of firm bankruptcies is surprisingly low in economies with poor institutions. We study a model of bank-firm relationship and show that the bank's decision to liquidate bad firms has two opposing effects. First, the bank gets a payoff if a firm is liquidated. Second, it loses the rent...

Why do banks remain passive? In a model of bank-firm relationship we study the trade-off a bank faces when having defaulting firms declared bankrupt. First, the bank receives a payoff if a firm is liquidated. Second, it provides information about a firm’s type to its competitors. Thereby,...

This paper reports recent events in Iceland where the political agents of oligarchs didn t even bother to try to influence, let alone contest, a national referendum on a new constitution because, if they didn t like the result, they would simply find ways to nullify the outcome ex post. The...