Laws express rules of conduct ('obligations') enforced by the means of penalties and rewards ('incentives'). The role of incentives in shaping individual behaviour has been largely analysed in the traditional economic literature. On the contrary, very little is known about the specific role of...

Laws and other formal rules are ‘obligations backed by incentives’. In this paper we explore how formal rules affect cooperative behavior. Our analysis is based on a series of experimental public good games designed to isolate the impact of exogenously requested minimum contributions...

The Collective Clemency Bill passed by the Italian Parliament in July 2006 represents a natural experiment to analyze the behavioral response of individuals to an exogenous manipulation of prison sentences. On the basis of a unique data set on the postrelease behavior of former inmates, we find...

In this paper we test for the theory of deterrence. We exploit the natural experiment provided by the Collective Clemency Bill passed by the Italian Parliament in July 2006. As a consequence of the provisions of the bill, expected punishment to former inmates recommitting a crime can be...

The authors examine the impact of prison conditions on future criminal behavior. The take over is based on a unique dataset on the post-release behavior of about twenty thousand Italian former prison inmates. The authors use variation in prison assignment as a means of identifying the effects of...

Understanding how public investment affects economic performance in highly indebted low-income countries is crucial in order to implement effective fiscal policies for adjustment with growth. In this paper we provide an empirical analysis to investigate the relationship between public...

This paper explores the way the man–nature relationship and the related environmental problems have been dealt along with the history of the economic thought. We discuss a number of different theoretical frameworks (classical, Marxian and neoclassical economics, Georgescu-Roegen's...