How do mechanisms that enforce cooperation emerge in a society where none are available and agents are endowed with just raw power that allows a more powerful agent to expropriate a less powerful one? We study a model where expropriation is costly and agents can choose whether to engage in...

This paper has two main purposes. Firstly, to provide information about the obstacles faced by Brazilian Labor Justice in making its decisions really effective. Secondly, to offer data which may help to estimate the amount of money involved in no-complied decisions. Regarding this, the paper...

We utilize case-level data from a large Belgian court to study a policy-relevant but thus far empirically unexplored aspect of judicial behavior: the time that a judge takes to deliberate on a case before rendering a verdict. Exploiting the de facto random administrative assignment of filed...

This text presents a set of empirical evidence to "test" some hypotheses about the impacts of Labor Justice on labor productivity. Hypotheses that this justice would encourage opportunistic and immediatist behaviors of employers and workers. And these behaviors would result in noncompliance with...

Since the 1930s, Labour Justice has played very important roles in resolving labour disputes in Brazil. Nonetheless, the question that arises today is whether that justice can (or even should) continue with those roles - or whether it is possible to conceive some alternatives, which involve...

In a Case Law regime Courts have more flexibility than in a Statute Law regime. Since Statutes are inevitably incomplete, this confers an advantage to the Statute Law regime over the Case Law one. However, all Courts rule ex-post, after most economic decisions are already taken. Therefore, the...

There is extensive literature on whether courts or legislators produce efficient rules, but which of them produces rules efficiently? The law is subject to uncertainty ex ante; uncertainty makes the outcomes of trials difficult to predict and deters parties from settling disputes out of court. In...

We consider the optimal education policies of a small economy whose government has a limited budget. Initially, the economy is closed and the government chooses its education policy to maximize welfare under autarky. Then the economy trades with the rest of the world. Lastly, the government...