This paper explores the role of cultural transmission in extortion. Extortion is modeled as an asymmetric contest where individuals from one group attempt to take from individuals in another group. Using a model of cultural transmission, this paper finds the existence of a unique asymptotically...

Numerous countries are introducing citizen feedback schemes to tame corruption. We study how best to incorporate feedback in public officials' incentives. The main novelty of our proposal is to allow citizens to directly influence officials' pay. We consider a situation in which entrepreneurs...

I model the connection between the equilibrium bribe amount and the fines imposed on both bribe-taker and bribe-payer. I show that Basu's (2011) proposal to lower the fines imposed on bribe-payers in order to induce more whistleblowing and increase the probability of penalizing corrupt...

We test the rational economic model of marginal deterrence of law enforcement - i.e., the need for graduating the penalty to the severity of the crime. We combine individual-level data on sentence length for a representative sample of US inmates with proxies for maximum punishment and monitoring...

This paper has four goals: First, the use of cash as a possible driving factor of the shadow economy is investigated. Second, the use of cash in crime, here especially in corruption, is also econometrically investigated. The influence is somewhat larger than on the shadow economy, but it is...

Psycho-sociological and legal aspects of online child sexual abuse such as criminalization, offender profiling, and rehabilitation have been thoroughly studied in the literature. The economics of the issue may appear relatively insignificant at first sight, considering the devastating effects on...

Income distribution is perceived to affect crime (Becker 1968; Thurow 1971; Merlo 2003). Consequently, economists have been modeling crime-employing inequality indicators as one of the explanatory variables, yielding mixed results. This paper argues that income polarization rather than inequality should...

We provide evidence about voters' response to crime control policies. We exploit a natural experiment arising from the Italian 2006 collective pardon releasing about one third of the prison population. The pardon created idiosyncratic incentives to recidivate across released individuals and...

Crime rates in Papua New Guinea’s capital city of Port Moresby are among the highest in the world. Few youth work, and good jobs are scarce. In 2013, the National Capital District Commission partnered with the World Bank to implement the Urban Youth Employment Project. The project offers...

This paper examines two key aspects of unemployment-its propagation mechanism and socioeconomic costs. It identifies a key feature of this macroeconomic phenomenon: it behaves like a disease. A detailed assessment of the transmission mechanism and the existing pecuniary and nonpecuniary costs of...

Our study is motivated by two disturbing evidences concerning women in India. On one hand, crime against women is on the rise while on the other, women's labor force participation rate (WLFPR) has been declining over the last three decades. We estimate the extent to which the decline in WLFPR...

This paper studies the effect of changes in economic conditions on crime. We exploit the 1990s trade liberalization in Brazil as a natural experiment generating exogenous shocks to local economies. We document that regions exposed to larger tariff reductions experienced a temporary increase in...

We provide evidence about voters' response to crime control policies. We exploit a natural experiment arising from the Italian 2006 collective pardon releasing about one third of the prison population. The pardon created idiosyncratic incentives to recidivate across released individuals and...

This paper has four goals: First, the use of cash as a possible driving factor of the shadow economy is investigated. Second, the use of cash in crime, here especially in corruption, is also econometrically investigated. The influence is somewhat larger than on the shadow economy, but it is...

I model the connection between the equilibrium bribe amount and the fines imposed on both bribe-taker and bribe-payer. I show that Basu’s (2011) proposal to lower the fines imposed on bribe-payers in order to induce more whistleblowing and increase the probability of penalizing corrupt...

Birth order has been found to have a surprisingly large influence on educational attainment, yet much less is known about the role of birth order on delinquency outcomes such as disciplinary problems in school, juvenile delinquency, and adult crime: outcomes that carry significant negative...

Mandated political representation over the last twenty years has had a different impact on the reporting of crime by the low castes than what is observed for the reporting of crime by women. I exploit the timing of the implementation of mandated political representation of the low castes to...