what you don t see can t hurt you an economic analysis of morality laws this paper provides an efficiency explanation for regulation of sex drugs and gambling we propose that these morality laws can be explained by considering some activities to impose a negative externality when the activity is observed efficiency requires discretion by the individual who engages in such activities when discretion is difficult to regulate directly the activities can instead be proscribed thereby giving individuals incentive to hide their actions from others we find conditions for the first best levels of consumption and hiding to be implementable since some level of activity is efficient the optimal sanctions are not maximal ce memoire propose une explication en termes d efficacite des regulations sur les industries du sexe de la drogue et du jeu organise on suggere que ces lois de moralite peuvent etre expliquees quand on considere que certaines activites imposent une externalite negative quand l activite est observee l efficacite reclame donc une certaine discretion de la part de l individu qui s engage dans de telles activites quand cette discretion est difficile a reglementer directement les activites peuvent etre prohibees et de ce fait on donne aux individus une incitation a cacher leurs activites aux autres on etablit que des conditions de premier ordre sur les niveaux de consommation et de camouflage peuvent etre mises en application puisque qu un certain niveau d activite est efficace les peines optimales ne sont pas maximales

setting standards for credible compliance and law enforcement in this paper we examine the setting of optimal legal standards to simultaneously induce parties to invest in care and to motivate law enforcers to detect violators of the law the strategic interaction between care providers and law enforcers determines the degree of efficiency achieved by the standards our principal finding is that some divergence between the marginal benefits and marginal costs of providing care is required to control enforcement costs further the setting of standards may effectively substitute for the setting of fines when penalties for violation are fixed in particular maximal fines may be welfare reducing when standards are set optimally nous considerons dans cet article la determination en information incomplete de normes legales optimales pour a la fois inciter les citoyens a faire preuve de diligence prevention et motiver les agents de la paix a veiller au respect des lois l interaction strategique entre citoyens et agents de la paix determine l efficacite des normes choisies notre resultat principal est a l effet qu un ecart entre benefices marginaux et couts marginaux de la diligence est necessaire afin de reduire les couts d application des lois de plus les normes peuvent etre un substitut aux amendes lorsque les penalites pour infraction sont fixes des amendes maximales peuvent en particulier etre contre indiquees lorsque les normes sont optimalement determinees

accuracy in the determination of liability many legal rules notably rules of procedure and evidence are concerned with achieving accuracy in the outcome of adjudication in this article we study accuracy in the conventional model of law enforcement we consider why reducing error in determining liability is socially valuable and how error and its reduction affect the optimal probability and magnitude of sanctions this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

cartoon planet worlds of production and global production networks in the animation industry as more animated films are produced new worlds of production have emerged the animation production system is distinct from film production relying on different technologies and labor skills its globalization therefore has taken place differently although both are structured by the global production networks of the media conglomerates we present a framework for understanding the animation industry its international division of labor and its diverse markets enabled by pools of artistic labor growing demand and the diffusion of production skills copyright 2010 the author 2009 published by oxford university press on behalf of associazione icc all rights reserved oxford university press

creative cities creative spaces and urban policy the paper presents the results of an international study of creative industry policies and strategies based on a survey of public sector creative city initiatives and plans and their underlying rationales as well as this survey and an accompanying literature review interviews were carried out with senior policy makers and intermediaries from europe north america africa and south east asia the paper considers the scope and scale of so called new industrial clusters in local cultural and creative quarters and sub regional creative hubs which are the subject of policy interventions and public private investment the semantic and symbolic expansion of the cultural industries and their concentration in once declining urban and former industrial districts to the creative industries and now to the knowledge and experience economy is revealed in economic sectoral and spatial terms whilst policy convergence and emulation are evident manifested by the promotion of creative spaces and industry clusters

the attack and defense group contests best shot versus weakest link this study analyzes a group contest in which one group defenders follows a weakest link whereas the other group attackers follows a best shot impact function if we fully characterize the nash and coalition proof equilibria and show that with symmetric valuation the coalition proof equilibrium is unique up to the permutation of the identity of the active player in the attacker group with asymmetric valuation it is always an equilibrium for one of the highest valuation players to be active it may also be the case that the highest valuation players in the attacker group free ride completely on a group member with a lower valuation however in any equilibrium only one player in the attacker group is active whereas all the players in the defender group are active and exert the same effort we also characterize the nash and coalition proof equilibria for the case in which one group follows either a best shot or a weakest link but the other group follows an additive if jel c72 d70 d72 d74 h41

legal standards enforcement and corruption stricter laws require more incisive and costlier enforcement because enforcement activity depends both on available tax revenue and the honesty of officials the optimal legal standard of a benevolent government is increasing in per capita income and decreasing in officials corruption in contrast to the tollbooth view of regulation the standard chosen by a self interested government is a non monotonic function of officials corruption and can be either lower or higher than that chosen by a benevolent regulator international evidence on environmental regulation shows that standards correlate positively with per capita income and negatively with corruption consistent with the model s predictions for benevolent governments jel d73 k42 l51

creative economy policy in developing countries the case of indonesia this paper investigates how the creative economy discourse is interpreted and implemented in the context of indonesia as a developing country our main conclusion is that the discourse is interpreted differently across localities bandung appears to be the only locality whose interpretation aligns with the general understanding of a creative economy that emphasises knowledge creation and innovation this was made possible by the strong support from academia and communities who wanted to experiment with this policy idea our study also provides an insight into a creative economy developing not only as a discourse but also as a workable framework for development policies in this city conversely other cities seem to pragmatically use the policy idea without considering the local context in a rebranding exercise in order to drive economic development whereby traditional cultural industries are relabelled as creative despite performing hardly any innovation activities despite this bandung illustrates th

locating chinese urban housing policy in an international context china s economic development has often been contrasted with that of other transition economies in europe but academics have fought shy of making direct comparisons of urban housing reform in the two systems this paper fills this gap by making such direct comparisons adopting the market housing model advocated by the world bank as an analytical framework it finds that extensive housing privatisation in china is supported by a system of urban housing property rights and a growing residential mortgage market although china has a distinctive institutional framework there is also much variety among the european transition countries and a distinctive chinese model was not identified so this micro level analysis did not support the contention that china represents a form of contested modernity nonetheless a crucial point arises from china s hybrid status as a developing as well as a transition country the bulk of the urban migrant population remains excluded from formal housing policy and enabling st

corporate venturing and value creation a review and proposed framework abstract over the past decade companies worldwide have used corporate venturing cv as a means of revitalizing their operations building new capabilities and achieving strategic renewal creating value for shareholders business interest in cv has stimulated academic interest in the topic resulting in a rapidly growing but fragmented body of literature despite the growing international scholarly interest in cv researchers have devoted little effort to integrating prior findings in a cumulative fashion as a result studies do not build upon one another making it difficult to gauge the progress being made in addressing the fundamental research questions related to cv in this paper we examine the literature on cv seeking to synthesize integrate and link its key findings to do so we analyze this literature over the past decade to identify its major themes and research findings setting the stage for greater coherence in future research on cv we give special attention to the challenges and rewards of theory building in future cv research our review clearly shows that cv is an area of scholarly inquiry that has important implications for managerial practice

legal uncertainty as a welfare enhancing screen consider legal uncertainty as uncertainty about the legality of a specific action in particular suppose that the threshold of legality is uncertain i show that this legal uncertainty raises welfare legal uncertainty changes deterrence in opposite directions the probability of conviction increases for firms below the threshold while the probability of conviction decreases for firms above the threshold hence legal uncertainty acts as a welfare enhancing screen and increases welfare legal uncertainty discourages some actions with low private benefits while it encourages other actions with high private benefits

science parks and the growth of new technology based firms academic industry links innovation and markets the analysis distinguishes between firms 273 firms on and off science parks in sweden 1996 1998 in an effort to identify any element of added value which the park provides for new technology based firms ntbfs the study showed some differences between the experience of firms on and off park in respect to innovation and marketing issues firms located in science parks were significantly more likely to have a link with a local university than off park firms performance is examined under three headings employment growth sales growth and profitability initiatives to promote ntbfs on science parks will yield a higher rate of job creation than policies to help ntbfs in general

breaking the law when others do a model of law enforcement with neighborhood externalities abstract a standard assumption in the economics of law enforcement is that the probability of a violator being punished depends only on the resources devoted to enforcement however it is often true that the productivity of enforcement resources decreases with the number of violators in this paper an individual who violates the law provides a positive externality for other offenders because the probability of being punished decreases with the number of individuals violating the law this externality explains the existence of correlation between individuals decisions to break a law the model evaluates the implications when determining the socially optimal enforcement expenditure focusing specifically on the case of neighborhood crime in particular using a parametrized functional form i show that neighborhood externalities will enhance or impede enforcement depending on the crime rate

what does a university add to its local economy the local multiplier effects of a university are estimated using data for the university of nottingham gross output and disposable income multipliers are calculated the latter are adjusted to exclude the incomes of induced migrants whose welfare is assumed unchanged

science and technology parks and cooperation for innovation empirical evidence from spain abstract science and technology parks stps are one of the most important innovation policy initiatives previous studies show that location in a park promotes cooperation for innovation but do not investigate whether this cooperation produces better results we extend this literature by analyzing the effect of location on an stp on the results of cooperation for innovation and the mechanism facilitating this effect we rely on a much larger sample of firms and stps than previous studies and where necessary account for selection bias and endogeneity the results show that location in an stp increases the likelihood of cooperation for innovation and the intangible benefits of cooperation with the main innovation partner due mainly to a more diverse relationship

organized crime corruption and punishment we analyze an oligopoly model in which differentiated criminal organizations globally compete on criminal activities and engage in local corruption to avoid punishment when bribing costs are low that is badly paid and dishonest law enforcers work in a weak governance environment and the rents from criminal activity are sufficiently high we find that increasing policing and sanctions can generate higher crime rates indeed beyond a threshold further increases in intended expected punishment create incentives for organized crime to extend corruption rings and ensuing impunity results in a fall of actual expected punishment that yields more rather than less crime

optimal deterrence with legal defense expenditure i introduction in this article we consider a justice system which makes both type i errors sometimes convicting the innocent and type ii errors sometimes acquitting the guilty and in which legal defense expenditure on behalf of the accused can reduce their probability of conviction such expenditure has a private value but its social value is less clear we address two sets of issues first do individuals accused of crimes take socially optimal decisions about their expenditure on legal defense and if not what are the implications for public policy in terms of the regulation of defense expenditure or its provision by the state second what are the implications of legal defense expenditure for optimal deterrence policy in much of the literature on optimal deterrence welfare is the unweighted sum of the expected utilities of honest and dishonest individuals becker 1968 polinsky and shavell 1979 with such an efficiency oriented welfare function the only socially relevant aspects of legal defense are its effect on deterrence and its cost because defense expenditures reduce the probability of punishment of dishonest individuals they reduce the expected sanction on dishonest individuals and thus reduce deterrence however when there are type i errors honest individuals face the risk of wrongful arrest and conviction 1 defense expenditure by them increases the rewards for honesty what matters for deterrence are the effects of defense expenditure on the difference between the expected utility of honest and dishonest individuals we show that permitting defense expenditures may increase deterrence as compared with a system in which no such expenditure is permitted we also show that the level of defense expenditure chosen by accuseds is not efficient the private value of legal defense expenditure is the reduction in the probability of conviction both honest and dishonest individuals choose their expenditure when accused to maximize their expected utility the marginal effect of defense expenditure on the expected utility of honest and dishonest individuals at the privately optimal levels is zero consequently marginal changes in defense expenditure at the private optimum have no effect on deterrence because they do not change the difference between the expected utilities of honest and dishonest individuals but defense expenditures do have a positive marginal social cost so that the marginal private and social values of defense expenditure are different and there is scope for regulation to improve on the market equilibrium there is a commonly held view that type i and type ii errors have a direct effect on social welfare rather than an indirect one through their effect on deterrence the view is reflected in blackstone s remark that it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer volokh 1997 174 2 with a justice oriented welfare function reflecting concern with type i and ii error as well as with individuals expected utilities increases in defense expenditure by the honest reduce type i errors and thereby ceteris paribus increase welfare increases in defense expenditure by the dishonest increase type ii errors and thereby directly reduce welfare with a justice oriented welfare function honest individuals spend too little on defense if the social cost of a type i error is greater than the fine imposed if the individual is convicted the marginal social value of defense expenditure by the dishonest is always negative at their privately optimal level the canonical result in efficient deterrence policy is the becker 1968 demonstration that because fines have a positive deterrent effect but a zero marginal social cost the optimal policy is to increase them to a level that leaves convicted accused with zero wealth there are few examples of deterrence regimes that use maximal fines and the becker result has generated a large literature that suggest reasons why the efficient fine should not bankrupt convicted accused garoupa 1997 polinsky and shavell 2000

an empirical study of cereal crop production and technical efficiency of private farmers in ethiopia a mixed fixed random coefficients approach in this paper we use a fixed random coefficients regression model to analyse data for cereal growing small scale farmers in efficiency results show that land size is a major constraint and only small changes in cultivated area and land quality yield relatively high increments to output larger farms are relatively less productive everything else being equal human capital in the form of literacy and experience are found to affect productivity positively our findings show a high degree of farm specific technical inefficiency with regard to the inputs we find high degrees of input specific technical inefficiency especially so for labour and fertilizer the age structure of the household environmental factors and education are found to be weakly correlated with efficiency furthermore sharecropping is found to be positively correlated with technical efficiency

nutritional functional classification study of panama abstract despite significant progress wide spread malnutrition persists in panama this article describes a study which found that over half the malnutrition in the country is clustered in functional groups economically connected to the agricultural sector and which indicates that food availability is a serious problem for 25 of the population food intake deficits were equally prevalent among the urban and rural populations dietary composition was not seen as the principal problem rather malnutrition problems are linked to low wages and poor access to public services a nutrition policy for panama must be centred first on employment and income generation and then on extending and maintaining public health and nutrition services particularly for the extremely poor in the central provinces food policy per se would not seem a priority area for public intervention

organizational complexity in the regional cultural economy markusen a organizational complexity in the regional cultural economy regional studies cultural industries offer a truncated understanding of the regional cultural economy undercounting self employed workers and others outside the for profit sector commercial public non profit and unincorporated community sectors produce present train organize guide and regulate elements of the cultural economy each with distinctive structures goals and operational systems using survey and census data on artists for two large california regions inter relationships among the sectors are explored the size of the cultural economies of both regions would be underestimated if confined to for profit cultural industries in closing policy implications for regional policy makers are drawn out and avenues for further research are suggested markusen a la complexite organisationnelle de l economie culturelle regionale regional studies les industries culturelles fournissent une explication partielle de l econo

the arts and local economic development can a strong arts presence uplift local economies a study of 135 canadian cities the paper looks at arts related employment in 135 canadian urban areas over 35 years 1971 2006 successively examining location patterns co location with knowledge rich industries and impacts on

research parks and the location of industrial research laboratories an analysis of the effectiveness of a policy intervention utilizing county level data this paper predicts the growth in the number of private industrial research laboratories between 1960 and 1985 this was a period of rapid growth and spatial reorganization in industrial research activity a multi equation model which allows the influence of unmeasured factors and selectivity to be taken into account is used to test the ability of a policy intervention research parks to affect the growth in the number of local laboratories although the presence of research parks is correlated with the number of laboratories the analysis indicates that research parks were not effective local development tools but instead benefitted from the growth of research activity 2003 elsevier b v all rights reserved

regulatory errors optimal fines and the level of compliance abstract this paper shows that with a hierarchical structure of enforcement regulatory errors cause the optimal penalty to be non maximal even if offenders are risk neutral and fines are pure transfers and the private benefit from violation is strictly less than the social cost for all individuals in contrast with error free monitoring no finite fine is optimal within the same hierarchical structure also full compliance is an equilibrium outcome in the presence of errors whereas in the absence of errors the regulator can achieve only partial compliance

regulatory objectives and enforcement behavior economic models of enforcing environmental law have incorporated varying assumptions about regulatory objectives this paper examines the consequences of different attitudes toward the benefits and costs of pollution control on the part of regulators who have limited powers and resources we find that greater weight given to compliance costs relative to the social damages of the polluting activity will bring outcomes closer to the optimum when the regulator is strong but may move outcome further from the social optimum when regulatory powers are weak when negotiated noncompliance is an option greater consideration of compliance costs will tend to produce better results

constellations of firms and new ventures abstract firm growth is typically described as from the inside out an integrated process of resource capture supplementing the traditional view of growth from within this article focuses on how small firms come into being and grow resorting to cooperative relationships with external organizations through such a process new firms come into being without notable direct investments and grow without significant employment increases the emerging organizational design stresses the importance of constellations constellational structures suggest that organizations do not survive as isolated and self sufficient entities rather they are strongly tied to supportive quasi infrastructural collectives firms grow through various and changing interorganizational relationships we suggest that a growth path of firm disintegration is positively associated with flexibility cost reductions and more favorable competitive position that the success of this path in different industries and countries makes a venturing without investing process more than a small is beautiful fad we find regularities in growth patterns at the beginning an unplanned constellation of firms each geared to solving short term contingent problems planned interfirm linkages and partnerships geared to greater effectiveness arise in more advanced stages in this manner the competitive position of the constellation is improved this article suggests underlying conditions facilitating the growth of organizations that use synergies and the constellations resources effectively

the artistic dividend urban artistic specialisation and economic development implications over the past two decades urban and regional policy makers have increasingly looked to the arts and culture as an economic panacea especially for the older urban core the arts regional economic contribution is generally measured by totalling the revenue of larger arts organisations associated expenditures by patrons and multiplier effects this approach underestimates the contributions of creative artists to a regional economy because of high rates of self employment and direct export activity because artists work enhances the design production and marketing of products and services in other sectors and because artists induce innovation on the part of suppliers artists create import substituting entertainment options for regional consumers and spend large shares of their own incomes on local arts output the paper takes a labour centred view of the arts economy hypothesising that many artists choose a locale in which to work often without regard to particular employers but in response to a nur

institutions property taxation and local government finance in china china s rapid urbanisation has prompted its government to explore new sustainable sources of public revenue to finance the continued demand for urban infrastructure and services property tax advocates have sought to take advantage of the real estate booms that have occurred since economic liberalisation by actively campaigning for a real property levy as an appropriate policy choice against this background this study evaluates the prospect of implementing market value based property tax reforms in mainland china based on the new institutional economics perspective it posits property tax as an institutional arrangement which requires complementary mechanisms in land registration property appraisal tax administration social security and dispute resolution property tax reforms would not only necessitate technical changes but would also have extensive social political and legal repercussions for chinese society

mimicking errors and the optimal standard of proof abstract criminals often engage in costly avoidance to lower their likelihood of being detected and sanctioned such avoidance in turn affects the optimal enforcement policy this paper studies how the optimal standard of proof is affected by a specific type of avoidance namely investments by guilty defendants to mimic innocent individuals we show that when mimicking is possible the optimal standard of proof is weaker than preponderance of the evidence this stands in contrast to much of the literature which shows that non deterrence costs usually cause the standard of proof to be stronger than preponderance thus it is important not to ignore criminals secondary behavior when determining the optimal standard of proof

why higher punishment may reduce deterrence abstract assuming that the willingness to find a potentially innocent defendant guilty is decreasing in punishments we derive two results deterrence is decreasing when punishments are too high and deterrence maximizing punishments tend to increase in the quality of legal systems

avoidance screening and optimum enforcement a standard assumption in the economic literature on crime and punishment is that fines are costless transfers given this assumption several economists have argued that it is optimal to set the fine for engaging in a proscribed activity as high as possible the argument is a simple one raising the probability of a fine is costly since it requires devoting more resources to monitoring and apprehending individuals in contrast raising the magnitude of a fine is costless therefore the least costly way to achieve a given expected fine is to set the fine as high as possible presumably equal to the offender s wealth and adjust its probability so that the desired expected fine is obtained

marginal deterrence in enforcement of law we characterize optimal enforcement in a setting in which individuals can select among various levels of some activity all of which are monitored at the same rate but may be prosecuted and punished at varying rates for less harmful acts marginal expected penalties ought to fall short of marginal harms caused indeed some range of very minor acts should be legalized for more harmful acts whether marginal expected penalties should fall short of or exceed marginal harms depends on the balance between monitoring and prosecution punishment costs we also explore how the optimal enforcement policy varies with changes in these costs

the distinctive city divergent patterns in growth hierarchy and specialisation with accelerated world market integration cities compete with each other cities as sites of production and consumption targeting firms and households as semi autonomous location decision makers distinction may be sought in productive structure consumption and identity in this paper contradictory trends towards homogenisation and distinctiveness are theorised studying the occupational structure of 50 large us metropolitan areas it is found that distinctiveness has been increasing in economic base occupations though some heavily blue collar cities edge is eroding employment in consumption activities has been growing faster than in the economic base and cities are becoming more alike in consumption structure it is concluded that the search for niches in exporting sectors and related occupational mix is key to urban resurgence

reasonable doubt and the optimal magnitude of fines should the penalty fit the crime models of the enforcement compliance relationship have assumed that both the probability and magnitude of fines are independent choice variables of policy makers these models indicate that it may be optimal to monitor with lowfrequency but to inflict uniformly maximal penalties for all infractions detected this article shows that if the judicial system is built on the reasonable doubt test then the penalty and the probability of conviction are not independent in particular as the penalty increases the probability of conviction falls as a result uniformly maximal penalties may actually encourage crime rather than deter it this article shows that optimal fines should rise with the severity of the infraction that is the penalty should fit the crime models of the enforcement compliance relationship generally treat both the probability and magnitude of fines as independent choice variables of the government this approach has led becker 1968 and others to conclude that it is optimal to set uniformly maximal penalties for all crimes and to set the probability of conviction at the minimum level necessary to enforce compliance with the law while this normative prescription is natural and intuitive there still remains a larger positive question of why in most nations of the world penalties are not uniformly high but rather rise with the severity of the crime one possible resolution of the positive and normative questions may lie in the fact that penalties and probabilities of conviction are not generally independent convictions are typically determined by judges or jurors who are instructed to convict only if the evidence convinces them beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty psychologists however have found that a juror s willingness to convict may be influenced by more than just the evidence jurors are very sensitive to the potential penalties that defendants may pay

the food first bias and nutrition policy lessons from ethiopia abstract as in many countries from sub saharan africa nutrition policy in ethiopia is dominated by a focus on national and household food production and food security the results of the 1992 national rural nutrition survey and a substantial body of evidence and theory from other settings challenge this view in ethiopia high levels of chronic malnutrition exist in food deficit and food surplus regions alike and all regions have experienced worsening of nutritional status during the last decade moreover child nutritional status is only weakly and inconsistently associated with size of cultivated area nutrition surveillance and other empirically based efforts to improve policy should give explicit attention to policy education as an integral part of their stated objective and workplan

nutritional classification study of peru who and where are the poor abstract in peru in 1984 approximately 60 of the households with malnourished children were engaged in agricultural production or wage work these nutritional problems were associated with insufficient incomes inadequate diets low levels of schooling poor housing quality inadequate access to safe water unsanitary conditions and high levels of childhood morbidity from diarrhoeal disease for the long run the solution is to reverse the longstanding bias against agriculture and labour particularly in the highlands direct nutritional interventions must be undertaken urgently to assist the households with severe malnutrition this article identifies these households by occupational group and geographical locale

housing the knowledge economy in china an examination of housing provision in support of science parks little attention is paid in the extant academic literature to the question of housing knowledge workers despite the potential mismatches between housing supply and demand this paper provides an initial examination of housing the knowledge economy in china focusing on three science parks sps zhongguancun z park beijing zhangjiang z ship shanghai and optics valley of china ovc wuhan it discusses to what extent and how these three sps have factored in the housing dimension in connection with the knowledge economy paying particular attention to housing affordability location inside the sps or outside in the wider city region and the mode of provision market or state insights were drawn from documentary analysis and in depth interviews in the three chosen case studies initial evaluation of policies geared towards housing supply in china suggests that the housing question needs to come to the fore in discussions of structural transformation towards the knowledge economy

criminal deterrence in the reduced form a new perspective on ehrlich s seminal study i introduction perhaps the best known and most influential econometric analysis of the deterrent effect of criminal penalties is isaac ehrlich s 1973 participation in illegitimate activities a theoretical and empirical analysis he reported large and significant marginal deterrent effects of penalties for a wide range of crimes ehrlich s work was heavily criticized on methodological grounds and many subsequent studies have contradicted his results while still others have not 1 nonetheless ehrlich s work remains an important hallmark in the study of criminal deterrence this note is motivated by recent research that indicates that penalties may have indirect consequences that could reduce their deterrent effect higher penalties could for instance encourage a criminal to spend more effort avoiding detection and prosecution malik 1990 and snyder 1990 for instance as lott 1987 1992 shows higher penalties may increase the amount of money criminals spend on legal defense 2 this means that higher penalties could reduce the probability of apprehension and conviction in addition a feature of the legal system may generate another way for higher penalties to reduce the probability of punishment this feature is that judges and juries must apply the reasonable doubt test to their decision to convict a defendant assume that jurors establish the level of doubt which is reasonable by finding the threshold that will minimize expected social losses if juries like criminals have a forecast of likely penalties then as the expected penalty rises the cost of an incorrect conviction also rises this means the juror s threshold level of reasonable doubt will rise as well the effect is to reduce the probability that a given defendant will be convicted andreoni 1991 if either the avoidance or the reasonable doubt effect is significant then this will mitigate the direct deterrent effect of penalties on crime rates reexamining ehrlich s work we see that his prime objective was to identify a single equation in a three equation simultaneous equations system that being the equation predicting crime rates he found significant negative coefficients on penalties which he took as evidence for his theoretical model of criminal behavior in which criminals could be deterred by higher penalties if more recent theories are correct in claiming that higher penalties may also decrease the chance of conviction then ehrlich s estimation of the single equation will not tell a complete story in particular we must estimate a reduced form model which will capture both the direct and indirect effects of penalties on crime rates this paper will address these questions using ehrlich s original data replicating ehrlich s regressions we find strong direct deterrent effects of penalties however we also find that increased penalties have a significant negative affect on the probability of conviction as predicted by the theoretical studies we combine these effects by examining the reduced form equations for both crime rates and probabilities of conviction we find that the total effect of penalties on crime rates is approximately zero for all twelve crime categories considered but that the effects of penalties on probabilities of conviction remain negative and significant in the reduced form equations this note allows for two general conclusions first we provide some evidence for theoretical models that predict that penalties may reduce the probability that criminals will be convicted second and more importantly despite one s views on the many widely discussed methodological issues surrounding ehrlich s seminal work when generalized to account for possibilities that higher penalties may reduce the probability of conviction his data generate much different policy implications than those widely adopted at the time of his paper s publication ii specification this section discusses the specification of the structural equations for ehrlich s original study

income effects of donated commodities in rural panama analyses of food expenditure data from rural households in panama showed that the marginal propensity to consume food out of additional income in the form of donated food is not different than the marginal propensity to consume food out of money income for households participating in the veraguas supplemental feeding program these results suggest that take home food programs can have significant income mediated impacts on the acquisition of food and accordingly food supplementation programs should be designed to maximize the income value of the donated commodities in terms of prices prevailing in the local markets

enforcement costs and the choice of policy instruments for controlling pollution i introduction when evaluating policy instruments for controlling pollution analysts generally agree that economic incentives are superior to direct controls in terms of minimizing abatement costs however when it comes to minimizing enforcement costs there is no such agreement some analysts such as freeman et al 1973 and anderson et al 1977 argue that economic incentives would be much easier to enforce than direct controls while others such as drayton 1978 argue that they would be virtually unenforceable the debate typically centers on technical difficulties in continuously monitoring emissions and to a lesser extent on political and legal issues related to the assessment of penalties 1 an issue that has not been examined is whether there are economic reasons for enforcement costs to vary across policy instruments although there is now a sizable economic literature on the problem of noncompliance with pollution control policies there have been no attempts to formally compare enforcement costs across policy instruments 2 accordingly the purpose of this note is to examine whether there are economic grounds for arguing that enforcement costs would be lower for economic incentives than direct controls 3 the policy instruments compared are marketable permits or emissions taxes and uniform standards the instruments are compared in a setting where the penalty schedule is previously specified by some judicial or legislative body and the regulator s enforcement policy is limited to the choice of audit frequency the analysis is based on the premise that for any policy instrument that targets emissions the regulator will have to periodically monitor emissions and assess penalties for noncompliance the relevant question then is whether less frequent monitoring would be required to ensure compliance with economic incentives casual analysis suggests this should be the case economic incentives minimize aggregate abatement costs and lower abatement costs imply lower costs to firms of complying this should imply in turn that less stringent enforcement is needed to achieve compliance this argument although intuitively appealing is flawed using a simple model of pollution control with costly enforcement i show that enforcement costs narrowly defined may be higher for economic incentives for purposes of exposition the result is established in a setting where the regulator ensures each firm is fully compliant however as shown in the appendix the result generalizes to the more realistic setting where firms are partially compliant ii the model consider a group of n risk neutral firms emitting a single pollutant for simplicity the damages from the pollutant are assumed to depend only on total emissions each firm s abatement costs are given by a strictly convex function c sub i x sub i that is decreasing in emissions x sub i the firm s maximum emissions level is denoted mathematical expression omitted and is defined by mathematical expression omitted with probability p sub i a regulator audits each firm and measures its emissions if the regulator finds the firm s actual emissions x sub i exceed its allowed emissions s sub i the firm is assessed a fine of f x sub i s sub i as is common in the literature on enforcement i assume the fine schedule is previously specified e g by a legislative body 4 thus the regulator can choose the probability with which it audits firms but not the fine it assesses for noncompliance i assume the fine schedule is such that both the total fine and marginal fine are increasing in the violation size x sub i s sub i f prime is greater than 0 and f prime prime is grater than 0 because the regulator is assumed to ensure full compliance no violations occur and no fines are collected therefore enforcement costs consist solely of auditing or monitoring costs to simplify the analysis the cost of conducting an audit a is assumed to be the same across firms

key worker housing welfare reform and the new spatial policy in england raco m key worker housing welfare reform and the new spatial policy in england regional studies under the labour government the character of spatial policy in england has been subject to significant change the emphasis has increasingly been on spatial policy as an active social policy this paper uses the example of public sector key worker housing programmes in england to exemplify and analyse the character of these changes it argues that the new approach also contains an explicit recognition that social policies can and should be re oriented towards the wider objectives of accumulation and competitiveness and this has broader implications for the organization and character of the welfare state raco m le logement des travailleurs essentiels la reforme du syteme de protection sociale et la nouvelle politique regionale au r u regional studies sous le gouvernement travailliste la politique regionale s est sensiblement modifiee de plus en plus on met l accent sur la politique regionale comme pol

the geography of innovation in small and medium sized firms in west germany since the 1980s a more micro economic oriented view has settled the dispute between macro economic theories over the causes of regional development differentiated studies revealed an unequal spatial distribution of r d laboratories and innovating firms and furthermore it was discovered that the innovation behaviour of firms differs between types of regions however these studies still left several questions unanswered

rural bound determinants of metro to non metro migration in the united states a general global precept is that agglomeration forces lead to migration from rural to urban areas yet for much of the time since the early 1970s more people have moved from metro to nonmetro u s counties the underlying causes of this pattern have changed over time with economic shocks and changing household preferences for instance the post 2000 period has seen a significant decline in domestic migration rates a significant increase in commodity prices that favor rural areas and potential changes in the valuation of natural amenities that would affect migration this article investigates the determinants of u s gross migration from metro to nonmetro counties and nonmetro to metro counties for the 1995 2000 and 2005 2009 periods in order to compare the differences in rural to urban and urban to rural migration as well as compare the 1990s to the 2005 2009 periods more specifically the present study extends the literature by more broadly examining the underlying factors associated with deconcentration and economic restructuring arguments of metro to nonmetro migration the article uses 1 extensive county to county migration flows and 2 the utility maximization theory that extends the framework of a discrete choice model the results show that population density distance to urban areas industry mix employment growth natural amenities and percentage of older people are key factors underlying these migration patterns we also find a slight fading of effects of natural amenities and population density and a slight increase in the effects of wage and employment growth from 2005 2009

equate and conflate political commitment to hunger and undernutrition reduction in five high burden countries summary as political commitment is an essential ingredient for elevating food and nutrition security onto policy agendas commitment metrics have proliferated many conflate government commitment to fight hunger with combating undernutrition we test the hypothesis that commitment to hunger reduction is empirically different from commitment to reducing undernutrition through expert surveys in five high burden countries bangladesh malawi nepal tanzania and zambia our findings confirm the hypothesis we conclude that sensitive commitment metrics are needed to guide government and donor policies and programmatic action without historically inadequate prioritization of non food aspects of malnutrition may persist to imperil achieving global nutrition targets

to comply or not to comply pollution standard setting under costly monitoring and sanctioning in this paper we characterize optimal regulatory policies composed of a pollution standard a probability of inspection and a fine for non compliance in a context where both monitoring and sanctioning are socially costly and the penalty may include gravity and non gravity components at the regulator s discretion under given penalties the optimal policy entails compliance with the standard as long as a quite intuitive condition is met non compliant policies may include standards even below the pollution levels that minimize the sum of abatement costs and external damages interestingly the appropriate structure of the penalty under non compliance is highly progressive while the best possible shape of the fine under compliance is linear if the regulator is entitled to choose the structure of the fine linear penalties are socially preferred and the optimal policy induces compliance

building talented worker housing in shenzhen china to sustain place competitiveness in china economic reforms over the last three decades have transformed its urban governments so that economic growth takes priority over other policy goals the purpose of this paper is to explore how talented worker housing policies have emerged within one of china s first class cities namely shenzhen to address its affordability problems but also to enhance local economic competitiveness whilst shenzhen is heading in the direction of an international entrepreneurial city focusing in particular on high value added industry it needs to attract and retain professional skilled workers to sustain this growth trajectory drawing on the concept of urban entrepreneurialism the paper examines how talented worker housing policies and procedures have been initiated and implemented in shenzhen in relation to its economic development strategy and affordable housing programme the paper suggests that not only is policy delivery proving problematic but affordability problems remain insurmountable thus potentially limiting the effectiveness of this particular urban entrepreneurial strategy in supporting place competitiveness

the optimal use of fines and imprisonment abstract this paper examines the use of fines and imprisonment to deter individuals from engaging in harmful activities these sanctions are analyzed separately as well as together first for identical risk neutral individuals and then for two groups of risk neutral individuals who differ by wealth when fines are used alone and individuals are identical the optimal fine and probability of apprehension are such that there is some underdeterrence if individuals differ by wealth then the optimal fine for the high wealth group exceeds the fine for the low wealth group when imprisonment is used alone and individuals are identical the optimal imprisonment term and probability may be such that there is either underdeterrence or overdeterrence if individuals differ by wealth the optimal imprisonment term for the high wealth group may be longer or shorter than the term for the low wealth group when fines and imprisonment are used together it is desirable to use the fine to its maximum feasible extent before possibly supplementing it with an imprisonment term the effects of risk aversion of these results are also discussed

preponderance of evidence abstract this paper investigates the incentive properties of the standard of proof for a finding of negligence when evidence about injurers behavior is imperfect we show that a more likely than not decision rule provides maximal incentives for potential tort feasors to exert care an injurer is then held liable whenever inadequate care appears more likely than due care and not liable otherwise our analysis provides a deterrence rationale for the exclusionary rules of evidence found in common law and the preponderance of evidence standard of proof

environmental enforcement when inspectability is endogenous a model with overshooting properties if a firm can influence its monitorability vis a vis an environmental regulator it is shown that increasing the thoroughness of inspections induces the firm to substitute towards more transparent technologies whilst increasing their frequency may cause substitution the other way perversely when the effect of such substitution is taken into account an increase in the frequency of inspections or equally the stringency of penalties may worsen the firm s environmental performance the agency should favour more thorough inspections than existing theory suggests particularly in sectors where the scope for such substitution is great moreover when monitorability adjusts only sluggishly to policy shocks because it is an embodied characteristic of capital for example the environmental impacts of increased frequency and increased thoroughness well over and under shoot their respective long run impacts in assessing regulatory reform therefore it is important to leave sufficient time for the class of adjustments identified to occur the possibility of overshooting can be used as an alternative to existing regulatory capture theories to explain why the efficacy of some classes of regulatory reform may fade through time

a protectionist foodgrain price policy the case of rice in panama abstract panama has pursued a protectionist price policy for rice with domestic prices well above the world market level the government marketing authority purchases sufficient rice to support the established price level and stores or exports the surplus although producers benefit this policy imposes significant costs on consumers government expenditures and economic efficiency one policy recommendation is to bring domestic prices in line with the international level although free trade is one possibility a market stabilization programme could be retained at a minimum panama s rice price should reflect domestic demand and not production costs the unfavourable rice fertilizer price ratio also deserves attention

the demand for creative arts in regional victoria australia a healthy creative arts industry can contribute significantly to the economic and social fabric of a community unfortunately regional areas often suffer from a lack of supply and demand for the creative arts this article explores the demand for the creative arts in three regional locations in victoria australia using three broad dimensions of demand attitudes towards the arts frequency of participation in the arts and level of expenditure on the arts the analysis of demand patterns uses the general modelling approach of levy garboua and montmarquette 1996 as a basis and makes use of the ordered probit class of models for its statistical analysis the study confirms that individual levels of demand are contingent on a range of demographic characteristics and also identifies factors such as festival attendance and increased past creative arts expenditure as being important determinants of demand for the arts

relying on the information of interested parties we investigate the conventional wisdom that competition among interested parties attempting to influence a decisionmaker by providing verifiable information elicits all relevant information we find that if the decisionmaker is strategically sophisticated and well informed about the relevant variables and about the preferences of the interested party or parties competition may be unnecessary to achieve this result if the decisionmaker is unsophisticated or not well informed competition is not generally sufficient if the interested parties interests are sufficiently opposed however or if the decisionmaker is seeking to advance the parties welfare then competition can reduce or even eliminate the decisionmaker s need for prior knowledge about the relevant variables and for strategic sophistication in other settings only the combination of competition among information providers and a sophisticated skepticism is sufficient to allow effective decisionmaking