Any-Where Any-Time: Ambiguity and the Perceived Probability of Apprehension

Enforcement is a costly endeavor. Thus, governments ought to be innovative in designing less costly policies, yet, effective in preventing crime. To this end, this paper suggests using insights from behavioral law and economics. Empirical evidence demonstrates that police have an important effect in deterring crime. However, increasing the number of policemen is a costly policy. Therefore, this paper explores policy changes, which exploit offender’s ambiguity aversion in order to reduce crime without increasing the police force. Namely, empirical evidence suggests that criminals are better deterred by ambiguous detection. Thus, this paper analyzes the ways to randomize the apprehension strategies to meet this end. Furthermore, it provides new evidence, based on a survey carried out for the purpose of this paper, that potential violators are largely not aware of policy changes. Inasmuch as the information regarding the intensified uncertainty is essential to its success, this paper discusses the possibility to increase criminals’ awareness through the “availability heuristic.

Disentangling fiscal effects of local constitutions

We apply the difference-in-discontinuities design to disentangle the fiscal effects of the governance system conditional on electoral systems. We take advantage of a natural experiment, which involves two institutional reforms at the local level in Poland. The first reform introduced two electoral rules, which change along an exogenous population threshold: smaller municipalities use majoritarian elections, larger municipalities use proportional elections. The second reform changed the governance system in Polish municipalities from “parliamentary” to “presidential”. Our results indicate that a change from parliamentary to presidential form led to lower vertical fiscal imbalance predominantly in the jurisdictions with majoritarian elections and to a lesser extent in municipalities governed by proportional elections. This therefore confirms an interaction effect between the forms of government and electoral rules

Disentangling fiscal effects of local constitutions

We apply the difference-in-discontinuities design to disentangle the fiscal effects the governance system conditional on electoral systems. We take advantage of a natural experiment, which involves two institutional reforms in Poland. Our results indicate that a change from parliamentary to presidential form led to lower vertical fiscal imbalance predominantly in the jurisdictions with majoritarian elections and to a lesser extent in municipalities governed by proportional elections

Law & Economics at sixty:Mapping the field with bibliometric and machine learning tools

As the year 2020 marks the 60th anniversary of the landmark paper in the Law &amp; Economics (L&amp;E) field by Ronald Coase—The Problem of Social Cost—we provide a systematic bibliometric analysis of the development of this field over the years. We look at the output and input side of knowledge production in the field of L&amp;E. The former consists of the volume of production and thematic coverage of the field. The latter—input—looks at the producers of knowledge, the institutional and country affiliations of authors, and the intellectual structure of the field. Thus, the “who”, the “where” knowledge is produced as is also that of on “whose” shoulders the field stands. We demonstrate that Law &amp; Economics shifted from more theory driven work to empirical and evidence-based contributions. Likewise, we show that the Law &amp; Economics field tends to be dominated by authors affiliated with economics departments, and crucially; however, more impactful research seems to be produced by inter-disciplinary cooperation. The L&amp;E field further resembles the economics domain in terms of co-authorship patterns, number of citations and lengths of papers. Finally, we look at diversity in the field of L&amp;E and show, for instance, that the share of female scholars has been steadily growing for the last two decades.</p

Cross-cultural variation in deliberate metaphor interpretation

The distinction between ‘deliberate’ and ‘non deliberate’ metaphors has been developed within a five-step framework (Steen) of metaphor production. Deliberate metaphors invite the addressee to pay special attention to their cross-domain structure mapping rather than focusing primarily on the topical proposition. This paper presents results of a pilot survey eliciting interpretations for the metaphors A NATION IS A BODY/A NATION IS A PERSON from an international sample of respondents in 10 different countries. ESL/EFL users from diverse cultural and/or linguistic backgrounds were asked to apply the metaphorical idiom body politic to their home nations. The responses show systematic variation in preferred metaphor interpretations, some of which can be linked to dominant cultural traditions, as well as evidence of polemical and/or ironic elaboration. Neither of these findings is predicted by classic conceptualist models that describe metaphor understanding as an automatic and unconscious process. Instead, when paying special attention to metaphoricity, informants seem to have chosen between diverse interpretation versions and in some cases to have elaborated them further to achieve social pragmatic effects. These findings provide new supporting evidence for Deliberate Metaphor Theory by highlighting deliberateness in metaphor interpretation and outlining perspectives for further empirical testing of metaphor understanding in specific registers and usage contexts (e.g., political discourse, EFL/ESL acquisition)

Can vaccination intentions against COVID-19 be nudged?

Once vaccines against COVID-19 became available in many countries, a new challenge has emerged - how to increase the number of people who vaccinate? Different policies are being considered and implemented, including behaviourally informed interventions (i.e., nudges). In this study, we have experimentally examined two types of nudges on representative samples of two countries - descriptive social norms (Israel) and saliency of either the death experience from COVID-19 or its symptoms (UK). To increase the legitimacy of nudges, we have also examined the effectiveness of transparent nudges, where the goal of the nudge and the reasons of its implementation (expected effectiveness) were disclosed. We did not find evidence that informing people that the vast majority of their country-people intend to vaccinate enhanced vaccination intentions in Israel. We also did not find evidence that making the death experience from COVID-19, or its hard symptoms, salient enhanced vaccination intentions in the UK. Finally, transparent nudges as well did not change the results. We further provide evidence for the reasons why people choose not to vaccinate, and whether different factors such as gender, belief in conspiracy theories, political ideology, and risk perception, play a role in people's intentions to vaccinate or susceptibility to nudges.</p

The price of creativity:A conjoint experiment in copyrights

Policymakers around the world are increasingly regulating creators' (copy)rights in their work. This includes economic rights and moral rights. While the former type of rights is recognized and protected in most jurisdictions, the approach to the latter - moral rights - differs. How allocation and protection of copyrights affects creators' choices depends on their preferences. Yet, creators' preferences are almost not researched empirically. This paper uses a conjoint experiment, applied for the first time in this context, on representative samples in the UK (general population and professionals) and the USA (professionals) designed to reveal people's preferences with respect to different rights derived from copyrights laws. We find that moral rights are valued more than economic rights, yet participants were willing to trade this right. Such findings might suggest reconsidering existing regulations in particularly with regards to the question of whether the right of attribution can and should be "traded".</p

A Feminine or Masculine Crisis?:Gender Stereotypes and Leadership During a Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic posed new challenges for leaders, requiring behavior change and public self-compliance. Stereotypically feminine qualities, such as compassion and a good approach to people, may have helped achieve these goals, rendering the pandemic a “feminine crisis.” The special nature of this crisis, along with media attention on female-led countries successfully managing the pandemic, raises the question of whether female leaders would be perceived as more competent in handling such a crisis. In an experimental study conducted on a representative sample in Poland, we assessed whether female prime minister candidates or candidates with feminine traits had an advantage when their competence in managing a large-scale pandemic was evaluated. Surprisingly, we found that, contrary to national security and economic crises (where male or masculine candidates tend to be advantaged), women or feminine candidates were not perceived as having an advantage in managing a COVID-19 type crisis. Furthermore, conservative participants seemed to perceive male candidates as more competent, even in the pandemic context. Although the differences were small in magnitude, they suggest that even in a potentially “feminine crisis,” women do not fare better than men, while men still fare better in stereotypically male crises.</p

Don't believe it! A global perspective on cognitive reflection and conspiracy theories about COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic increased the saliency of an old phenomenon – conspiracy theories. In times of a global crisis and an unprecedented access to information, fake news seems to spread as fast as the virus. A global pandemic requires more than ever self-compliance. Only behavior change and vaccination on a large scale can bring us to normality. Yet believing in conspiracy theories about COVID-19 is expected to undermine such compliance. What determines susceptibility to believing in misinformation? In this study, using data on mostly representative samples of 45 countries around the world (38,113 participants), we found evidence that people with more deliberate thinking are less likely to believe in conspiracy theories. Furthermore, on the individual level people who are more prone to believe in conspiracy theories are less likely to comply with behavior change. We are in the midst of the biggest coordination game and such insights in social psychology can inform policymakers