{"title":"Learning by Mimicking and Modifying: A Model of Policy Knowledge Diffusion with Evidence from Legal Implementation","authors":"D. Glick","doi":"10.1093/JLEO/EWS041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JLEO/EWS041","url":null,"abstract":"I model learning from others’ policies when it is difficult to know what outcome a policy will produce. I adopt a recent formalization of partially invertible outcome signals to build a model of policy knowledge diffusion. The model merges variables, such as similarity and capacity that emerge from existing empirical research with previously unincorporated policy-making realities, such as continuous policy options and choices between mimicking and modifying another’s policy. Together, they produce an informational model of policy knowledge diffusion, which addresses \"who,\" \"how,\" and \"when\" questions. In addition to offering specific propositions, the model shifts the focus from the diffusion of specific policies to diffusion of information in policy areas. I provide initial empirical support by applying the model to questions of legal implementation within organizations. I summarize interviews with university attorneys describing how their institutions learn from each other when responding to the law (JEL C7, D81, D83, K20).","PeriodicalId":47987,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law Economics & Organization","volume":"14 1","pages":"339-370"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2014-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74535101","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Information and the disposition of medical malpractice claims: A competing risks analysis","authors":"P. Fenn, N. Rickman","doi":"10.1093/JLEO/EWT002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JLEO/EWT002","url":null,"abstract":"We use a competing risk model to explore the relationship between information about case strength and the speed with which medical malpractice disputes are resolved. We have data on the time to resolution of such disputes in a group of English hospitals and how each dispute is resolved (drop, settlement, or trial). We also have detailed data on the evolution of expert assessments of case strength and the timing of external experts’ reports that are designed to share information and that, therefore, might be expected to influence litigation outcomes. We find that litigation encourages dropping and settling of cases over time in a systematic way relating to their assessed strength; cases that involve relatively little uncertainty are resolved faster than those where liability is more unclear. We suggest that this evidence is consistent with the litigation process using time to help sort, and deal with, cases according to their strength. (JEL: C72, K41).","PeriodicalId":47987,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law Economics & Organization","volume":"48 1","pages":"244-274"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2014-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79036586","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Enforcement and Public Corruption: Evidence from the American States","authors":"J. Alt, D. Lassen","doi":"10.1093/JLEO/EWS036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JLEO/EWS036","url":null,"abstract":"We use panel data on corruption convictions, new panels of assistant US Attorneys and relative public sector wages, and careful attention to the consequences of modeling endogeneity to estimate the impact of prosecutorial resources on criminal convictions of those who undertake corrupt acts. Consistent with \"system capacity\" arguments, we find that greater prosecutor resources result in more convictions for corruption, other things equal. By explicitly determining the allocation of prosecutorial resources endogenously from partisan and administrative considerations, we show that this specification leads to larger estimates of the effect of resources on convictions. We also control for and confirm in a panel context the effects of many previously identified correlates and causes of corruption. We find more limited, recent evidence for the deterrent effect of increased prosecutions. The results are robust to various ways of measuring the number of convictions as well as to various estimators. (JEL D72, D73, H83, K42)","PeriodicalId":47987,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law Economics & Organization","volume":"79 1","pages":"306-338"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2014-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85959477","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Voting For The President: The Supreme Court During War","authors":"William G. Howell, Faisal Z. Ahmed","doi":"10.1093/JLEO/EWS040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JLEO/EWS040","url":null,"abstract":"An extraordinary body of scholarship suggests that wars, especially major wars, stimulate presidential power. And central to this argument is a conviction that judges predictably uphold elements of presidents’ policy agendas in war that would not withstand judicial scrutiny in peace. Few scholars, however, have actually subjected this claim to quantitative investigation. This article does so. Examining the universe of Supreme Court cases to which the US Government, a cabinet member, or a president was a named party over a 75-year period, and estimating a series of fixed effects and matching models, we find that during war Justices were 15 percentage points more likely to side with the government on the statutory cases that most directly implicated the president. We also document sizable effects associated with both the transitions from peace to war and from war to peace. On constitutional cases, however, null effects are consistently observed. These various estimates are robust to a wide variety of model specifications and do not appear to derive from the deep selection biases that pervade empirical studies of the courts. (JEL K0, K3, Z0).","PeriodicalId":47987,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law Economics & Organization","volume":"54 1","pages":"39-71"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2014-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90604289","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An Evaluation of Cross-National Measures of Judicial Independence","authors":"Julio Rios-Figueroa, Jeffrey K. Staton","doi":"10.1093/JLEO/EWS029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JLEO/EWS029","url":null,"abstract":"We provide a conceptual map of judicial independence and evaluate the content, construct, and convergent validity of 13 cross-national measures. There is evidence suggesting the validity of extant de facto measures, though their proper use requires attention to correlated patterns of measurement error and missing data. The evidence for the validity of extant de jure measures is weaker. Among other findings, we do not observe a strong and direct link between the rules that allegedly promote judicial independence and independent behavior. The results suggest that while the measurement of both de jure and de facto judicial independence requires a careful strategy for measuring latent concepts, the way that scholars should address this issue depends on whether they are targeting the incentives for independent behavior induced by formal rules or independent behavior itself. (JEL C19, C80, O43)","PeriodicalId":47987,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law Economics & Organization","volume":"36 1","pages":"104-137"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2014-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84772280","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Value of Corporate Governance for Bank Finance in an Emerging Economy: Evidence from a Natural Experiment","authors":"S. Quinn","doi":"10.1093/JLEO/EWS030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JLEO/EWS030","url":null,"abstract":"This article uses a company law reform in Morocco as a natural experiment to study the value of corporate governance for bank credit. In 2001, Morocco replaced a company law from 19th-century France with modern standards of corporate accountability; this reform was very similar to reforms implemented in many developing countries at about the same time. I evaluate the impact of that reform upon manufacturing firms’ access to bank credit, using panel data to test the effect upon bank overdraft provision of a firm’s legal obligations (i.e., the firm’s choice of the more onerous SA status rather than the less onerous SARL). I find that the reform induced many SA firms to switch to SARL, and that—relative to firms remaining in the SA status—this caused a significant and substantial withdrawal of overdraft facilities. I show that this result is robust to firm’s fixed effects and to the choice of explanatory variables, and I consider heterogeneous effects across different firms. I conclude that the reform may have been counterproductive in several important respects. (JEL O12, K22, G21)","PeriodicalId":47987,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law Economics & Organization","volume":"51 1","pages":"1-38"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2014-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77910959","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"\"God Damn\": The Law and Economics of Monastic Malediction","authors":"P. Leeson","doi":"10.1093/JLEO/EWS025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JLEO/EWS025","url":null,"abstract":"Today monks are known for turning the other cheek, honoring saints, and blessing humanity with brotherly love. But for centuries they were known equally for fulminating their foes, humiliating saints, and casting calamitous curses at persons who crossed them. Clerics called these curses \"maledictions.\" This article argues that medieval communities of monks and canons used maledictions to protect their property against predators where government and physical self-help were unavailable to them. To explain how they did this I develop a theory of cursing with rational agents. I show that curses capable of improving property protection when cursors and their targets are rational must satisfy three conditions. They must be grounded in targets’ existing beliefs, monopolized by cursors, and unfalsifiable. Malediction satisfied these conditions, making it an effective institutional substitute for conventional institutions of clerical property protection. (JEL D83, K11, K42, K49, N43, Z12)","PeriodicalId":47987,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law Economics & Organization","volume":"57 1","pages":"193-216"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2014-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79052713","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Televised Attacks and the Incumbency Advantage in State Supreme Courts","authors":"M. Hall","doi":"10.1093/JLEO/EWS033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JLEO/EWS033","url":null,"abstract":"This project evaluates whether televised attack advertising has detrimental effects on the electoral performance of state supreme court justices seeking reelection. I examine this question by estimating theoretically specified models of vote shares that include all televised messages for incumbents and challengers in 76 partisan and nonpartisan elections in 19 states from 2002 through 2006. I also rely on Campaign Media Analysis Group advertising data and campaign finance measures to disentangle the effects of advertising from campaign spending. Results show that attacks have deleterious effects on the incumbency advantage but only in nonpartisan elections. In this regard, the preference for nonpartisan elections among many reform advocates has rendered some concerns about the pernicious effects of negativity into self-fulfilling prophecies. More broadly, these findings demonstrate the powerful force of institutional arrangements in shaping democratic politics and highlight striking similarities between state supreme court elections and elections to other important offices in the United States. (JEL D7, D72)","PeriodicalId":47987,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law Economics & Organization","volume":"85 1","pages":"138-164"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2014-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86164065","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How the Senate and the President Affect the Timing of Power-sharing Rule Changes in the US House","authors":"Gisela Sin, A. Lupia","doi":"10.1093/JLEO/EWS039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JLEO/EWS039","url":null,"abstract":"A new model and related empirical work explain how the Senate and President affect the timing of power-sharing rule changes in the US House. We argue that shifts in the Senate's or President's preferences (e.g., a new majority party in the Senate; a new president) reshape House members' expectations about which legislative outcomes are achievable. Reshaped expectations, in turn, can alter House members' perceptions of the consequences of reallocating power among themselves. We prove that such reshaped expectations can induce House members to change power-sharing rules. To evaluate this claim, we examine major rule changes from 1879 to 2009. We find that the House was far more likely to change rules after elections that shifted partisan control of the Senate or Presidency than after elections in which no such shift occurred. Since the existing literature does not anticipate this finding, this work clarifies an important attribute of how power is distributed within the House. (JEL C7, D02, D72). The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.","PeriodicalId":47987,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law Economics & Organization","volume":"135 1","pages":"1184-1216"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2013-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86294476","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Performance Feedback with Career Concerns","authors":"Stephen Hansen","doi":"10.1093/JLEO/EWS032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/JLEO/EWS032","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the incentive effects of interim performance evaluation when a worker has career concerns and effort is history dependent. Disclosure has two effects: it increases the variance of future effort, and it allows the worker to use current effort to influence his employer's belief about future effort, creating a ratchet effect. The article provides necessary and sufficient conditions for full disclosure to dominate no disclosure; shows that the optimal disclosure policy reveals output realizations in the center of the distribution, but not in the tails; and discusses the potential implications of the results for the analysis of performance appraisal systems. (JEL D82, D86, L20) The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.","PeriodicalId":47987,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Law Economics & Organization","volume":"14 1","pages":"1279-1316"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2013-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78305947","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}