The United States federal mandatory minimums have been controversial not only because of the length of the mandatory sentences for even first-time offenders, but also because the eligibility quantities for crack are very small when compared to those for other drugs. This paper shows that the...

The United States federal mandatory minimums have been controversial not only because of the length of the mandatory sentences for even first-time offenders, but also because the eligibility quantities for crack are very small when compared to those for other drugs. This paper shows that the...

We study the impact of plea bargaining on decision errors and operating costs of the inquisitorial justice system. Scholars and legal professionals are divided over whether such plea deals are compatible with the inquisitorial tradition. In this paper, we stylize inquisitorial criminal procedure...

The plea bargaining mechanism in criminal procedure serves as a favorable screening device, separating between the guilty and the innocent. Previous literature ignored the impact of asymmetric information on prosecutor performance inside the adversarial court, which degrades his bargaining...

This paper tests predictions of a structural, augmented supply-of-offenders model regarding the relative effects of police, public prosecution and courts, respectively, on crime. Using detailed data on the different stages of the criminal prosecution process in Germany, empirical evidence...

Abstract We estimate the likelihood of miscarriages of justice by reframing the problem in the context of misclassified binary choice models. The estimator is based on new nonparametric identification results, for which we provide methods to empirically test the key identifying assumptions and...

In 2020, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed an antitrust suit against Google alleging that Google has unlawfully monopolized the markets for general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising. The complaint raises questions involving market definition, monopoly...

There is a question whether the execution rate is appropriate to examine the deterrent effect of death penalty. Instead of using execution rate, this paper uses dummy variables to categorize states into different groups and to compare the group mean homicide rates. With U.S. state-level panel...

The prosecution of criminals is costly, and subject to errors. In contrast to adversarial court procedures, the prosecutor is regarded as an impartial investigator and aide to the judge in inquisitorial justice systems. We show in a sequential prosecution game of a Bayesian court that a...

We model a simple justice system in which a jury is mandated by society to assess the guilt and the punishment of an accused. Jurors are assumed to be almost perfect representatives of society, but they ignore the cost to society of implementing the sentence. As a result the jury is shown to...