International Review of Law and Economics最新文献

One of the main goals of competition authorities is to deter anticompetitive practices. That is one of the reasons why antitrust decisions are made public: to reinforce the deterrence effect, as the impact of the mass media on public opinion may affect firms’ reputations. Our empirical strategy focuses on identifying how the nature of specific antitrust actions by competition authorities affects the size of news items and their visibility within the newspaper. We study this relationship by using a new database containing all news published in Spain over a 30-month period, regarding all cases analysed by the Spanish competition authority. Our analysis produced two key conclusions about how the media deals with positive and negative news on the reputation of listed and non-listed companies. On average, the difference in size between positive and negative news for listed firms is greater than the difference present in the actions referring to non-listed firms. Secondly, newspapers concede greater visibility to them by positioning more favourably, both on the right-hand side of the paper and on initial pages. These results suggest that the deterrence effect that competition authorities seek by making their decisions public may be weakened by the presence of bias in media.

Why are innovators in creative industries often not concerned about their unprotected intellectual properties? Based on a unique dataset obtained from an extensive survey among one, two and three-starred Italian chefs, we explore the determinants of a creator’s lack of concern about the imitation of their innovations. Several determinants are identified. We confirm that the lack of fear of imitation and, thus, the lack of need for further IP protection, is associated with organizational strategies for the management of new ideas. Furthermore, this lack of fear of imitation is motivated by the innovator’s strategies aimed at product differentiation and client loyalty. Interestingly, in all the models estimated with the two samples considered (full sample and 2 and 3-starred chefs only), the most robust driver of innovators’ peace of mind is their own perception that innovative creation is a spontaneous, individual, innovator-specific process.

We describe crime attributable to the Mariel Boatlift, the 1980 Cuban refugee crisis that increased Miami’s population by nearly 10%. Using synthetic control methods to match Miami with cities that exhibit similar pre-intervention crime patterns, we find the phenomenon comparatively increased property crime and murder rates; we also document weaker but suggestive relative growth in violent crime. Compositional features of the newcomers partially drive results; the disproportionately young, male Cubans’ characteristics highly correlate with illicit activity. However, the degree of prior incarceration and psychiatric institutionalization likely explains the majority of the observed effects. Given the group’s unique composition and the absence of rigorous screening, it likely constitutes the worst observed migration event in terms of public safety in US history. The Marielitos bear little resemblance to other groups of newcomers. Hence, it would be imprudent to use crime connected with the 1980 event we study to inform immigration policy.

The standard political economy narrative of representative assemblies in Western Europe is one of political bargaining and credible commitments. Monarchs sought to bargain with the leading men of the realms, exchanging their commitments on various policies for revenues and other resources. This narrative has been forcibly challenged by Boucoyannis (2015, 2021) who points out that, in the High Middle Ages, it was strong monarchs who were able to compel the leading men of their realms to assemblies She argues that strong monarchs were able to leverage their subjects’ demand for adjudication (justice) to compel their attendance; and then extract their promises of resources. In this paper, I add to the discussion of the origins of representative institutions. Prior to the High Middle Ages, assemblies were ubiquitous but scarcely democratic. I provide a coordination model of assemblies that provides a compelling account of these early medieval assemblies. Similar to arguments put forth by Hardin (1989, 1999), Ordeshook (1992), Weingast (1997), Weingast (2005), and Hadfield and Weingast (2014) regarding modern de jure constitutions, I argue that assemblies allowed monarchs to provide focal point around which they could coordinate their leading men. There was relatively little meaningful bargaining at these assemblies; rather, monarchs provided ceremony and spectacle meant to focus their leading men on their agendas.

This paper examines the impact of fiduciary duties on collective asset sales in the case of owners acting as delegates for other owners, thereby potentially inducing conflicts of interests. Our identification strategy exploits a unique legal shock in Singapore, which established fiduciary duties in those transactions in the real estate market known colloquially as en bloc sales. The imposition of fiduciary duties caused the price premium of units sold via en bloc sales to increase over units ineligible for en bloc sale, as well as over units that, although eligible for en bloc sale, are sold individually. In addition, this valuation effect is stronger for projects with especially severe agency problems as proxied by high ownership turnover. This legal reform also affects the general private housing market beyond the en bloc premium: findings show that residential owners are increasingly willing to participate and reduce condominium turnover. Finally, we find that the stock price of public real estate developers responded positively to the legal reform, which indicates a possible overall positive welfare effect. Our study highlights the importance of judicial oversight for addressing agency conflicts in non-consensual asset-sale mechanisms.

Since the infamous riot of 1967, high crime rates and negative media reports have labeled the city of Detroit as one of the most dangerous cities in the United States. Using a Spatial Dynamic Panel Data model with both individual and time fixed effects to capture the unobserved heterogeneity as well as the time varying common factors, we investigate the spatial and temporal interactions of criminal activities among the block groups in Detroit. The results indicate that the crime incidents in a block is correlated with the average crime incidents in neighboring block groups contemporaneously, with an estimated coefficient of 0.4758, and the block crime incidents is also correlated with the average crime incidents in neighboring blocks from the previous year, with an estimated coefficient of 0.1572. And crime incidents in a block are positively correlated with its own crime incidents in the previous year. The findings are robust against different model specifications based on alternative spatial weights matrices. The results for both violent crimes and property crimes also suggest strong spatial and temporal correlations among neighboring blocks, providing suggestive and preliminary evidence for policy implementation.

In this study we investigate the effect of female director on corporate social responsibility (CSR) by taking the advantage of the introduction of legal gender quota that led to the exogenous change in the female representation in corporate board around the world. We find that the “gender quote” reforms effectively increase gender diversity and improve CSR performance. When comparing the legislation-based regulations with governance code-based regulations, we find that the former brings stronger effects on CSR performance. Finally, the effects are more pronounced in countries with higher gender equality or common law legal systems.

Theories on electoral accountability argue that politicians have strong incentives to avoid punishment from voters for poor administrative abilities. As their chances of reelection can be harmed by failure of businesses, politicians may encourage the speed up of insolvency proceedings to mitigate the voters’ punishment before the elections. Using a sample of 82 countries covering the period 2005–2017, we examined how legislative and presidential elections affect the time required to resolve corporate insolvency. Surprisingly, panel estimates reveal that the length of time to resolve insolvency tends to actually increase during periods of legislative elections and one year prior to such elections in the case of rehabilitation procedures. As the political agenda of the new government can affect the efficiency of restructuring plans, the uncertainty of legislative election outcomes can incentivize debtor and creditors to prolong the resolution of a firm’s reorganization to adjust the plan and/or adopt the most suitable plan. Additionally, our econometric approach reports no significant association between the duration of insolvency procedures and the cycle of presidential elections.

Bank discouragement is one of the most important factors preventing firms from accessing credit. This discouragement stems from strong information asymmetry between firm and bank. To reduce this asymmetry, the latter can either gather information from the firm or access public information on the firm through credit databases. We argue that the presence of credit bureaus, set up by the regulator, which reduces information asymmetry, helps reduce banking discouragement. More specifically, this study is the first to use credit registries to capture the occurrence of screening errors. Our results clearly suggest that the probability of being discouraged decreases when creditor information is available. This phenomenon is even more obvious in regard to more opaque structures, such as risky firms or small and medium-sized firms. In contrast, relationship lending reduces the importance of external creditor information in determining the extent to which borrowers are discouraged. Our results are consistent with previous research on information asymmetry in financial intermediation and show the importance of the legal environment in which firms operate for their financial decisions.

Since Federation,² the ratio of people living outside capital cities to those living within these cities have been declining in all six States. Historically, Australia opted for a regulatory approach that favoured in favouring satellite towns around state capitals, such as Newcastle and the Gold Coast, over the alternative of decentralised regional urban centres, such as Wagga Wagga or Townsville. The latest phase of this planning paradigm envisages integrating these satellites and their capital cities into mega-metropolises. Notwithstanding the benefits from agglomeration, rectifying the observed imbalance assumes an urgency not only through a national security imperative but also through social equity. To analyse the cause of this population decline, I use a theoretical model to explain how sub-national state political accountability distorts incentives when it comes to the provision of public goods. The equilibrium provision is not Pareto optimal given the observed population distribution externality. The inefficient provision of public goods is causing more people to choose to live in the capital city, which in turn creates a vicious circle of worsening population distribution. The model suggests that breaking this circle requires Coasean bargaining so that eliminating the externality is assigned to the Australian jurisdiction that can do so at the lowest cost. Surrender and acceptance agreements under section 111 of the Australian Constitution furnish a modality for the envisaged bargaining to the end of transforming regional Australia into a national jurisdiction. Whether this efficiency can be realised remains a question of transaction costs and income effects flowing from such jurisdictional reassignment.