Search results for " Law and Economics."

Another "French paradox": explaining why interest rates to microenterprises dit not increase with the change in French usury legislation

2015

Conventional wisdom indicates that the growth of credit may not materialize if credit rates remain capped by usury laws, as had long been the case in France. France therefore abolished usury ceilings on loans to microenterprise in an effort to increase financing for microentrepreneurs. This should have led to an increase in interest rates and increase in microcredit. However, we do not find any increase in interest rates and this is therefore a paradox. The paper provides a brief literature review and the salient features of the legislative changes in France. It follows this up with a presentation of interest rate movements. The discussion of possible explanations of the paradox includes cl…

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT: ADAM SMITH’S THEORY OF SENTIMENTAL LAW AND ECONOMICS

2020

For Adam Smith, a crime is not the result of a rational calculation of loss and gain but the consequence of envy and a vain desire to parade wealth to attract the approbation of others, combined with a natural systematic bias in overestimating the probability of success. Similarly, Smith does not conceive of legal sanctions as a rational deterrent but as deriving from the feeling of resentment. While the prevailing approach of the eighteenth century is a rational explanation of crime and a utilitarian use of punishment, Adam Smith instead builds his theory of criminal behavior and legal prosecution consistently on the sentiments. A well-functioning legal system is thus an unintended consequ…

An introduction to the Economics of Fake Degrees

2008

08045; International audience; This paper critiques the multifarious ways whereby academic qualifications may be falsified in the international marketplace. The objectives are fourfold: (1) defining the main terms used such as fake degrees and diploma mills; (2) providing a brief history of fake degrees and identifying the factors that explain their recent development; (3) developing a theoretical framework to analyze fake degrees; and (4) exploring the costs and benefits of this activity and its net impacton a given society. Degrees serve instrumental and ceremonial purposes. It is argued that degree holders may be considered as members of a club. They confer totheir holders excludable but…

Promoting self-employment: Does it create more employment and business activity?

2021

International audience; We assess the economic impact of reforms promoting self-employment in the three countries that have implemented such reforms since the early 2000s: the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and France. To that end, we use an unbalanced cross country-industry dataset of 4,226 observations, including 12 OECD countries and 20 market industries, over the 1995-2016 period. We first observe, using country-level data, that the share of self-employed workers in total employment is quite stable or declines over the period in all countries in our dataset, except in the three countries where large reforms promoting self-employment have been implemented, and only after these reforms. …

Is the French mobile phone cartel really a cartel?

2009

International audience; France Telecom (FT), SFR and Bouygues Telecom (BT) have been fined by France's Conseil de la Concurrence (CC) for organizing a mobile phone cartel with stable market shares (one-half, one-third and one-sixth, respectively) and for directly exchanging commercial information. While not contesting the legal decision, it is argued here that the economic reasoning is flawed. (1) As the CC made much of the firms' stable market shares, we have first followed this line of reasoning by considering that the market shares are quotas under uniform costs. Even if there is a general incentive to form a monopolistic cartel, BT was too small for it to be worth its while to join it; it i…

Organisations de l'économie sociale et solidaire : quelle théorie de la gouvernance ?

2012

A major aim for cooperatives is to become the model of stakeholders' organizations while keeping profitable. This supposes to resolve the three following points: to ensure an efficient management of resources which makes it possible to carry out transactions at a cost lower than that which would take place on the market; to design mechanisms of corporate governance allowing expression and implementation of stakeholders' interests and expectations; to implement mechanisms of control allowing to evaluate the action of top executives, particularly regarding satisfaction of expressed stakeholders expectations.

Carte di pagamento con funzione contactless, uso non autorizzato e responsabilità dei prestatori di servizi di pagamento

2021

The essay addresses the topic of technological evolution in the payment system, focusing on the figure of contactless payment cards and the issue of unauthorized use by the holder. Having defined the discipline of payment instruments and the liability regime of payment service providers under the PSD2, the contribution examines the decision of the ECJ in the Deniz Bank case. It makes some critical remarks with respect to the methodological approach of the Court, marked by an unjustified interpretative formalism and li le inclined to an exegesis based on the parameter of efficiency, according to the models offered by Economic Analysis of Law.

Il delitto di "caporalato" tra diritti minimi della persona e tutela del mercato del lavoro

2020

Il contributo analizza il reato di intermediazione illecita e sfruttamento lavorativo, offrendo un’analisi comparata con il sistema repressivo tedesco. Lo studio si sofferma, in particolare, sui limiti di legittimazione del diritto penale nella punizione dei fatti di “caporalato”, nel tentativo di scongiurare che l’intervento repressivo nelle dinamiche economiche e contrattuali, di natura sinallagmatica, possa assumere una portata tale da porsi in contrasto con il canone della sussidiarietà. A tal fine, si suggerisce una prospettiva ermeneutica che incentri il disvalore penale del reato di cui all’art. 603-bis c.p. sulla lesione dei diritti fondamentali del lavoratore – riconducibili agli a…

Law and the invisible hand. A theory of Adam Smith's Jurisprudence

2023

Il marginalismo giuridico di Gaetano Filangieri

2009

This work aims at presenting the elements of marginalist analysis which occur in the thought of Gaetano Filangieri. In the pages of La Scienza della Legislazione the Neapolitan writer shows the tendency to develop a utilitarian investigation which pays attention to the judgements individuals make over social phenomena at the margin point. A proof of this tendency can be found in the explanation of the principle of decreasing marginal utility, argued in Head XXXI of Book III, which represents one of the most effective demonstrations that can be found before the end of XIX century literature. The most remarkably original fact is that, of all the five parts which compose the Filangierian work,…