Many facts are learned through the intermediation of individuals with special access to information, such as law enforcement officers, employees with a security clearance, or experts with specific knowledge. This paper considers whether societies can learn about such facts when information is...

This article translates and extends Becker (1968) from public law enforcement to private litigation by examining optimal legal system design in a model with private suits, signals of case strength, court error, and two types of primary behavior: harmful acts that may be deterred and benign acts...

I analyze the real effects of the quality of the judicial enforcement by showing that an increase in the average duration of civil proceedings reduces firms' employment. I exploit a reorganization of court districts in Italy as an exogenous shock to court productivity and, using an instrumental...

We conduct a field experiment to examine whether the deterrent effect of law enforcement can be strengthened by making law enforcement activities more salient. Our focus is on illegal disposal of household garbage in residential areas. At a random subset of 56 locations in a city in the...

This paper studies a unique traffic law enforcement campaign in Germany and its impact on road safety. Key features of the campaign are (1) repeated one-day lasting massive speed limit monitoring (so called Blitzmarathons) and (2) a media campaign that informs the public in advance about the...

We conduct a field experiment to examine whether the deterrent effect of law enforcement can be strengthened by making law enforcement activities more salient. Our focus is on illegal disposal of household garbage in residential areas. At a random subset of 56 locations in a city in the...