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The „Chronica Danielis“ is a fantastical chronicle dedicated to the mythical Inglexio family, purported to have ruled Milan from the 7th to the 12th centuries. According to this legend, the emperor Frederick I was responsible for the family’s demise: when he destroyed Milan with the help of some Milanese traitors in 1145 (sic!), he either killed the last members of the Inglexio family or deported them to Germany. Jörg W. Busch has proved that the legend of the Inglexio was written during the rule of the della Torre family (1259–1277) to legitimise their power in Milan. The hypothesis is correct, but the „Cronica Federici primi“ – the third part of the text – is not a work of propaganda. On the contrary, it is a fictional reconstruction of the end of the della Torre family’s power after their defeat at Desio in 1277. Specifically, this article analyses the „Cronica Federici primi“ and provides a new edition of the text.

Giovanni Codagnello, a notary from Piacenza (c.1154–c.1234), wrote in his Liber rerum gestarum (1219–1222) a very personal re-elaboration of the defeat at Roncevaux, which he entitled Gesta Carli Francorum regis. Codagnello’s account is one of the oldest witnesses to the circulation in Italy of the legend of Roncevaux, but it has so far escaped the notice of scholars who have studied the Roland tradition in Italy. This article examines which version of the legend Codagnello knew. According to the author, he was familiar with a rhymed redaction of the Chanson de Roland. If this is the case, then it means that an exemplar of the Roland rimé was already circulating in northern Italy at the beginning of the thirteenth century.

We add to our understanding of the optimal method of judicial selection by exploiting an unusual feature in North Carolina: judges rotate location every 6 months. This allows us to identify the existence and source of sentencing variation over the electoral cycle. We show that when elections approach, felony sentences rise. This increase is found exclusively when judges are sentencing in their district of election, and only when elections are contested. When judges hear cases outside their home district, sentences do not significantly vary over the electoral cycle. Our results show that electoral sentencing cycles can be explained by strategic sentencing by judges in an attempt to please voters. The unique setting allows us to reject alternative behavioral or contextual explanations for the rise in sentences as elections approach. (JEL K42).

International audience; Laws not only affect behavior due to changes in material payoffs, but they may also change the perception individuals have of social norms, either by shifting them directly or by providing information on these norms. Using detailed daily survey data and exploiting the introduction of lockdown measures in the UK in the context of the COVID-19 health crisis, we provide causal evidence that the law drastically changed the perception of the norms regarding social distancing behaviors. We show that this effect of laws on perceived norms is mostly driven by an informational channel and that the intervention made perceptions of social norms converge to the actual prevalent norm.

International audience; In situations where social payoffs are not aligned with private incentives, enforcement with fines can be a way to sustain cooperation. In this paper we show, by the means of a lab experiment , that past fines can have an effect on current behavior even when no longer in force. We document two mechanisms: a) past fines affect directly individuals' future propensity to cooperate; b) when fines for non cooperation are in place in the past, individuals experience higher levels of cooperation from partners and, consistent with indirect reciprocity motives, are in turn nicer towards others once these fines have been removed. This second mechanism is empirically prevalent and, in contrast with the first, induces a snowball effect of past enforcement. Our results can inform the design of costly enforcement policies.

The anonymous Padovano, author of the Entrée d’Espagne, writes to admonish and educate the knights and the rulers of his time: his explicit aim is to «castoier li coarz et li van». Therefore, it is not surprising that the story of the chanson is provided with a moral intent. The knights of the Entrée often disobey Charlemagne’s orders because of their pride and wrath. Also Roland, the best Christian knight, is affected by these vices, as the episode of the conquest of Nobles shows. His adventure in the Orient can be read as a penitential route, at the end of which he learns the high value of humility. Given the moral goal of the text, the author proposes to date the Entrée in the early decades of the fourteenth century (between 1312 and 1328), when the Paduan commune and the Trevisan March were upset by civil wars, determined by the violence and the vicious ambitions of the local nobility.

Laws not only affect behavior due to changes in material payoffs, but they may also change the perception individuals have of societal norms, either by shifting them directly or by providing information on these norms. Using detailed daily survey data and exploiting the introduction of lockdown measures in the UK in the context of the COVID-19 health crisis, we provide causal evidence that the law drastically changed the perception of the norms regarding social distancing behaviors. We show this effect of laws on perceived norms is mostly driven by an informational channel.

This study analyzes voters’ response to criminal justice policies by exploiting a natural experiment. The 2006 Italian Collective Pardon Bill, designed and promoted by the incumbent center-left (CL) coalition, unexpectedly released about one-third of the prison population, creating idiosyncratic incentives to recidivate across pardoned individuals. Municipalities where resident pardoned individuals had a higher incentive to recidivate experienced a higher recidivism rate. We show that in those municipalities voters “punished” the CL coalition in the 2008 parliamentary elections. A one standard deviation increase in the incentive to recidivate—corresponding to an increase of recidivism of 15.9%—led to a 3.06% increase in the margin of victory of the center-right (CR) coalition in the post-pardon national elections (2008) relative to the last election before the pardon (2006). We also provide evidence of newspapers being more likely to report crime news involving pardoned individuals and of voters hardening their views on the incumbent national government’s ability to control crime. Our findings indicate that voters keep politicians accountable by conditioning their vote on the observed effects of public policies.

We study spatial variation in criminal sentencing. We show the existence of local sentencing practices varying widely even across geographically proximate areas. Using compulsory rotation of judges in North Carolina, we find that judges arriving in a new court gradually converge toward local sentencing practices. We provide evidence that convergence in sentencing corresponds to a process of learning about local practices, which is accelerated by the presence of senior judges in the district, and that these sentencing practices are correlated with local norms of behavior. Finally, we discuss the theoretical implications of these results for the optimal design of judicial systems.

We study how cooperation-enforcing institutions dynamically affect values and behavior using a lab experiment designed to create individual specific histories of past institutional exposure. We show that the effect of past institutions is mostly due to " indirect " behavioral spillovers: facing penalties in the past increases partners' cooperation in the past, which in turn positively affects ones' own current behavior. We demonstrate that such indirect spillovers induce persistent effects of institutions. However, for interactions that occur early on, we find a negative effect of past enforcement due to differential learning under different enforcement institutions.

Les outils de reduction de la delinquance et de la criminalite dans la societe font l’objet de debats recurrents. Ceux-ci se focalisent bien souvent sur l’efficacite des politiques penales et, en particulier, sur l’utilisation des peines de prison. Cet article a pour but de presenter la facon dont ces questions ont ete abordees par la litterature economique, ainsi que les principaux resultats mis en evidence au cours des deux dernieres decennies. Certains de ces travaux mettent en evidence que, contrairement au discours generalement vehicule, l’augmentation de la durete des sanctions n’est pas une condition necessaire a la reduction de la delinquance.

International audience; Using local administrative data from 1826 to 1936, we document the evolution of crime rates in nineteenth century France and we estimate the impact of a negative income shock on crime. Our identification strategy exploits the phylloxera crisis. Between 1863 and 1890, phylloxera destroyed about 40% of French vineyards. We use the geographical variation in the timing of this shock to identify its impact on property and violent crime rates, as well as minor offences. Our estimates suggest that the phylloxera crisis caused a substantial increase in property crime rates and a significant decrease in violent crimes.

We provide evidence about voters' response to crime policies. Our research design exploits a natural experiment arising from the Italian 2006 collective pardon bill suddenly releasing more than one third of the prison population. The design of the bill created idiosyncratic incentives to recidivate across pardoned individuals and municipalities. We show that municipalities where the incentive to recidivate of resident pardoned individuals was higher, experienced higher recidivism. At the same time, in these municipalities: i) newspapers were more likely to report crime news involving pardoned individuals; ii) voters held worse beliefs on the incumbent government's ability to control crime. Moreover, with respect to the previous elections, the incumbent government experienced a significantly worse electoral performance in the April 2008 elections relative to the opposition coalition. In terms of political cost, our estimates suggest that a one standard deviation increase in the incentive to recidivate (i.e., the random component in the effects of the policy) reduced the margin of victory of the incumbent government by 3.3%. Overall, our findings indicates that voters keep the incumbent government accountable by conditioning their vote on the observed effects of its policies.

We discuss measurement issues in crime rates in a cross-country comparative perspective. We show that while homicide and general crime rates follow quite similar patterns in the US this is not always the case in Europe. We provide an explanation of the observed patterns based on the use of fire harms.

We describe an interesting case of a 52 year-old patient affected by thyrotoxicosis crisis, in whom sinoatrial blocks were associated with syncope and treated effi ciently with beta-blockers.

This article presents a unique historical experiment to explore the dynamics of institutional change in the Middle Ages. We have assembled a novel data set, where information on political institutions for northern central Italian cities between 1000 and 1300 is matched with detailed information on the earthquakes that occurred in the area and period of interest. Exploiting the panel structure of the data, we document that the occurrence of an earthquake retarded institutional transition from autocratic regimes to self-government (the commune) in cities where the political and the religious leaders were the same person (episcopal see cities), but not in cities where political and religious powers were distinct (non–episcopal see cities). Such differential effect holds for destructive seismic episodes and for events that were felt by the population but did not cause any material damage to persons or objects. Ancillary results show that seismic events provoked a positive and statistically significant differential effect on the construction and further ornamentation of religious buildings between episcopal and non–episcopal see cities. Our findings are consistent with the idea that earthquakes, interpreted in the Middle Ages as manifestation of the will and outrage of God, represented a shock to people’s religious beliefs and, as a consequence, enhanced the ability of political-religious leaders to restore social order after a crisis relative to the emerging communal institutions. This interpretation is supported by historical evidence.

International audience; While theoretically important, the relationship between crime and employment is difficult to measure empirically. This paper addresses major identification challenges by exploiting high frequency data of daily online postings on job openings and closings at the county level, merged with individual-level administrative data about all inmates released from French prisons. We find that people who are released when jobs are being created are less likely to recidivate; conversely, people who are released when jobs are being cut are more likely to recidivate. We further show that news on job creation matters, over and beyond actual employment opportunities, suggesting implications for crime-control policies. From a methodological standpoint, this paper demonstrates how using media and online information on jobs can generate higher-frequency variation than administrative employment data, and help to overcome identification challenges to capture effects of variations in job market opportunities, especially when combined with other administrative sources.

French Abstract: Nous discutons de quelques developpements recents en economie experimentale sur la relation entre la loi et les normes sociales dans la determination des comportements. Dans l’approche traditionnelle de l’analyse economique du droit, l’effectivite des lois repose uniquement sur le systeme repressif mis en oeuvre pour les faire respecter. De nombreuses experiences de laboratoires montrent cependant que les obligations legales influencent aussi les comportements par un effet sur les anticipations, ce qui permet la coordination sur de bons equilibres par le jeu des preferences sociales, ainsi que par un effet direct sur les preferences elles-memes. Ces resultats ont des consequences importantes pour l’analyse economique des politiques legales et reglementaires.English Abstract: This paper discusses recent papers in experimental law and economics studying the relation between laws and social norms. Traditionally the law and economics analysis of legal compliance focuses on the effectiveness of the legal system in law enforcement. However, recent lab-experiments have shown that obligations might affect behaviors by influencing expectations about others' choices, thus allowing the emergence of virtuous equilibria in games where social preferences matter. Moreover, obligations might directly affect preferences. These results have implications for the analyses of legal rules and regulation.

Using department level administrative data from 1826 to 1936 we document the evolution of crime rates in 19th century France and we estimate the impact of a negative income shock on crime. Our identification strategy exploits the phylloxera crisis. Between 1863 and 1890, phylloxera destroyed about 40% of French vineyards. Using the departmental variation in the timing of this shock we instrument wine production and we identify the effects of the shock on property and violent crime rates. Our estimates suggest that the phylloxera crisis did not significantly impact on violent crimes but caused a strong increase in property crimes. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the phylloxera crisis caused an increase in property crime rates of about ten percent.

We study theoretically and in a lab-experiment how legal protection affects the level and type of investments in a setting where a player chooses an investment level before interacting repeatedly with the same set of agents. The investment stochastically affects the payoffs of the game in every subsequent period. We show that without legal protection: investments will be made since repeated interactions can serve as a substitute for legal enforcement; investments with less volatile returns are more likely; the investor might be forced to invest more to keep other players cooperative. Experimental results are broadly consistent with the theoretical findings.

During the last decades, societies have largely used incarceration as a central crime control tool. Between 1970 and 2008, the prison population per 1,000 inhabitants increased by a factor of more than 4.5 in the USA. Despite a dramatic difference in incarceration levels between the two sides of the Atlantic, also in European countries, prison population increased by a factor between two and three over the period 1970–2008 (Buonanno et al. 2011). This massive increase in incarceration had been coupled with a strong debate in social sciences over the magnitude of its impact on crime rates and over the reasons why crime rates might react to changes in prison population. Those favoring an increase in the severity of the criminal justice system have often argued that increasing prison sentences will lead prospective criminals to reduce their criminal activity. Criminals in fact would weight costs and benefits of crime, and an increase in the cost of criminal activities foll

We exploit the Collective Clemency Bill passed by the Italian Parliament in July 2006 to evaluate the indirect effects of a policy that randomly commutes actual sentences to expected sentences for 40 percent of the Italian prison population. We estimate the direct and indirect impact of the residual sentence – corresponding to a month less time served in prison associated with a month of expected sentence – at the date of release on individual recidivism. Using prison, nationality and region of residence to construct reference groups of former inmates, we find large indirect effects of this policy. In particular, we find that the reduction in the individuals’ recidivism due to an increase in their peers’ residual sentence is at least as large as their response to an increase in their own residual sentence. From this result we estimate a social multiplier in crime of 2.

We estimate social externalities of tax evasion in a model where congestion of the auditing resources of local tax authorities generates a social multiplier. Identification is based on a contrast of the variance of tax evasion at different levels of aggregation. We use a unique data set that contains audits of about 80,000 small businesses and professionals in Italy and also provides an exact measure of reference groups in our model. We find a social multiplier of about 3, which means that the equilibrium response to a shock that induces an exogenous variation in mean concealed income is about 3 times the initial average response. This is a short-run effect that persists to the extent that auditing resources are not adjusted to internalize the congestion externality.

We use a unique data set on post-release behavior of former Italian inmates to estimate the effect of prison conditions on recidivism. By combining different sources of data we exploit variation in prison conditions measured by: 1) the extent of overcrowding at the prison level, 2) the number of deaths in the facility of detention during an inmate’s stay and 3) the distance of the prison from the chief town of the province where the prison is located. By considering inmates who served their sentence in a jurisdiction different from the hometown in which they live after release, we can include province of residence fixed effects and account for the main source of unobserved heterogeneity correlated to prison conditions. We find that a harsher prison treatment does not reduce former inmates’ criminal activity. The extent of overcrowding and the number of deaths do not decrease the probability to be re-arrested. Instead, we find evidence that the degree of isolation measured by distance from the prison of detention to the chief town of the province where the prison is located increases recidivism.

Contrary to common perceptions, today both property and violent crimes (with the exception of homicides) are more widespread in Europe than in the United States, while the opposite was true thirty years ago. We label this fact as the ‘reversal of misfortunes’. We investigate what accounts for the reversal by studying the causal impact of demographic changes, incarceration, abortion, unemployment and immigration on crime. For this we use time series data (1970–2008) from seven European countries and the United States. We find that the demographic structure of the population and the incarceration rate are important determinants of crime. Our results suggest that a tougher incarceration policy may be an effective way to contrast crime in Europe. Our analysis does not provide information on how incarceration policy should be made tougher nor does it provide an answer to the question whether such a policy would also be efficient from a cost-benefit point of view. We leave this to future research. — Paolo Buonanno, Francesco Drago, Roberto Galbiati and Giulio Zanella

We study the eff ects of minimum mandatory sentences when judges are at least minimally averse to error and/or follow some “penalty should fit the crime” heuristic. We apply our analysis to the 2007 reform of the French Penal Code. We show that the introduction of minimum mandatory sentences in this context may backfire inducing more crime in the long run. Judges may prefer to acquit a criminal than convicting him to a sentence reputed too high. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

We experimentally investigate the effects of sanctions when there are multiple equilibria. Two subjects play a two-period minimum effort game in the presence of third player (principal). The principal benefits from coordination on higher effort, and is the only one informed of previous choices choices. We contrast introducing an exogenously imposed sanction in the second round to the case where the principal is allowed to decide whether or not, at a small cost, to impose a sanction. We find that exogenously introduced sanctions are effective in inducing optimistic beliefs about others and help coordination on more efficient equilibria. On the other hand, endogenously introduced sanctions negatively influence beliefs about the effort of the other player. The results supports the idea that sanctions have an expressive dimension which can undermine their effectiveness by discouraging optimistic players.

We run an experiment in which two subjects play a two-round minimum eort game in the presence of a third player (principal) who is the only one informed about past eort choices and benefits from a higher minimum eort of the others. Sanctions introduced in the second round by the experimenter lead to more optimistic beliefs and higher eorts.

In this paper we test for the theory of deterrence. We exploit the natural experiment provided by the Collective Clemency Bill passed by the Italian Parliament in July 2006. As a consequence of the provisions of the bill, expected punishment to former inmates recommitting a crime can be considered as good as randomly assigned. Based on a unique data set on post-release behaviour of former inmates, we find that an additional month in expected sentence reduces the propensity to recommit a crime by 1.24 percent: this corroborates the general deterrence hypothesis. However, this effect depends on the time previously served in prison: the behavioural response to an additional month of expected sentence decreases with the length of the prison spell. This second result can be hardly reconciled with the specific deterrence hypothesis according to which a stronger past experience of punishment should increase the sensitivity to future expected sanctions.

We investigate the role of individual interdependencies in tax evasion, arising from congestion on the auditing resources available to local tax authorities. Identification exploits a novel method based on comparison of the variance of individual behavior — concealed income in this case — at different levels of aggregation, within different subpopulations (Graham, 2008). This method allows us to mitigate some of the most severe problems that surround identification of neighbourhood effects, at the cost of identifying restrictions that arise naturally from our model. We employ a unique dataset of tax audits to about 75,000 self-employed individuals in Italy. Surprisingly, this sample is not statistically different from a random sample of taxpayers. We find a social multiplier of about 3, meaning that the equilibrium response to a shock that induces an exogenous variation in mean concealed income — such as tougher or looser tax enforcement — is about three times the initial average response

Laws and other formal rules are 'obligations backed by incentives'. We explore how laws work and affect behavior. Our analysis is based on a series of modified experimental public good games designed to isolate the impact of exogenously requested minimum contributions (obligations) from those of marginal incentives backing them. We find that obligations have a sizeable effect on cooperative behaviour even in absence of incentives. When non-binding incentives are introduced, requested contributions strongly sustain cooperation. Therefore, in contrast with cases in which incentives crowd out cooperative behaviour, in our experiments obligations and incentives are complements, jointly supporting high levels of contributions. Our results are consistent with the view that conformity to a rule is perceived as an obligation when it is backed by a system of incentives whose role in this case is not to modify the payoffs from material actions, but to give salience to the content of the rule. Moreover, we find that variations in obligations affect behaviour even when incentives are held constant. Finally, the effect of obligations on behaviour depends both on their impact on people's beliefs about others' contributions and on a direct effect of obligations on individuals' preferences for cooperation.

We provide an interpretation based on consistent beliefs for the widely accepted observation that a criminal conviction generates more stigma than an administrative penalty. Implications for the criminalization of administrative noncompliance are discussed.

It is a widely accepted conclusion of the economic literature on optimal law enforcement that nonmonetary sanctions should be introduced only when fines have been used up to their maximum extent. In this paper it is shown that when the sanctioning policy conveys information about the harmfulness of the sanctioned behavior, the use of nonmonetary sanctions can be optimal even when the monetary fine is not maximal. The argument is formalized in a model with rational but uninformed individuals, who know that the enforcer has better information about the harmfulness of actions but are uncertain about the true objectives of the enforcer.

How formal rules affect human behaviour is a crucial issue in economics. Formal rules are defined as obligations backed by incentives. The economic literature has largely focused on the role of incentives in shaping individual behaviour. Yet, the role of obligations, i.e. what formal rules ask people to do or not to do, has been largely ignored. In this paper we run a public good game experiment to analyze the behavioural effects of obligations. We find evidence that obligations can affect cooperative behaviour both by coordinating conditional co-operators’ beliefs about others’ behaviour and by directly affecting preferences for cooperation. Our results shed a new light on the behavioural channels through which formal rules can affect individual behaviour. These findings suggest the opportunity to broaden the scope of analysis in order to gain a better understanding of the effects of institutions on economic outcomes.

The tako-tsubo syndrome, or transient left ventricular apical ballooning, has been widely described in Japan as a cardiomyopathy which resembles acute myocardial infarction on presentation, but characterized by a normal coronary tree and a favorable outcome. Conversely few series have been described in Europe and etiology and mechanism are still unknown. We describe the case of a 74-year-old Italian woman with tako-tsubo cardiomyopathy, one of the first Italian cases reported to our knowledge. In the acute phase, echocardiography and ventriculography showed the typical mid-apical systolic left ventricular dysfunction, with an angiographically normal coronary tree. A few days after, technetium-99m single-photon emission computed tomography disclosed a large mid-apical perfusion defect and dobutamine stress echocardiography showed a typical "biphasic" response. Three months later, all of these tests normalized with normal left ventricular function. In conclusion, the results of functional tests, during the acute and subacute phases, suggest that, in the absence of evident coronary spasm, a transitory reduction of the coronary reserve played a role in the pathogenesis. In the absence of epicardial coronary obstruction this could be due to a transient microcircle dysfunction, and may be attributed to a spasm followed by impaired vasodilation capability.

It is a widely accepted conclusion of the economic literature on deterrence that nonmonetary sanctions should be introduced only when monetary fines have been used up to their maximum extent. However, this conclusion is at odds with what is commonly observed e.g. in the case of deterrence of driving offenses, where nonmonetary sanctions such as licence suspension or vehicle withdrawal are extensively used, even though it would be possible to apply a monetary sanction of equivalent value. In this paper it is shown that when the sanctioning policy conveys information about the riskiness of the sanctioned behavior, the conclusion about the optimal use of nonmonetary sanctions may be different. Namely, the use of nonmonetary sanctions can be optimal even though the monetary fine is not maximal. The argument is formalized in a model with rational though uninformed individuals, who know that the enforcer has superior information about the riskiness of action but are uncertain about the true objectives of the enforcer.

Laws consist of two components: the ‘obligations’ they express and the ‘incentives’ designed to enforce them. In this paper we run a public good experiment to test whether or not obligations have any independent effect on cooperation in social dilemmas. The results show that, for given marginal incentives, different levels of minimum contribution required by obligation determine significantly different levels of average contributions. Moreover, unexpected changes in the minimum contribution set up by obligation have asymmetric dynamic effects on the levels of cooperation: a reduction does not alter the descending trend of cooperation, whereas an increase induces a temporary re-start in the average level of cooperation. Nonetheless, obligations per se cannot sustain cooperation over time.

The first part of the paper extends the approach developed by Lambert and Ramos (1997) for the measurement of the redistributive effects of a personal income tax to include tax evasion. Particular attention is paid to the concept and measurement of horizontal equity. We show that the criteria adopted to identify the equals are critical in order to evaluate the fairness of income taxation. In particular, we compare the traditional criterion, when income alone is considered (what we call conventional perspective), with a criterion based on a composite set of socio-economic features (multi-criteria perspective). Secondly, this framework is applied to the measurement of the redistributive effects of tax evasion in Italian income tax. The empirical analysis shows that in the multi-criteria perspective, taxation improves the horizontal equity of pre-tax income distribution whereas, if the sole income is assumed as criterion of equity, income tax determines horizontal inequity.

The principle of Horizontal Equity (HE), claiming that the ‘equals in all relevant senses should be treated equally’, is considered as a basic principle to be followed in order to design and evaluate a redistributive policy. However, despite several indices of Horizontal Inequity (HI) having been proposed in the literature, the theoretical debate has not clarified yet ‘what is horizontal equity’. In this paper we aim at making clear what is the meaning of the principle of HE and its normative content. In particular we establish the true statuses of the two fundaments of the principle of HE, defining what is meant by ‘equals’ and then treating these ‘equals’ ‘equally’. The former is known as the identification problem, and the latter has typically been regarded as the normative claim of horizontal equity, but perhaps surprisingly the latter may be all but empty. Our analysis brings forth a new and more appropriate definition of the principle of HE. Some implications concerning the normative meaning of an HI index and the relationship between Horizontal and Vertical Equity are derived.

Sanctions are a means to provide incentives towards more pro-social behavior. Yet their implementation can be a signal that past behavior was undesirable. We investigate experimentally the importance of the informational content of the choice to sanction. We place this in a context of a coordination game to focus attention on beliefs and information and less on intrinsic or pro-social motivations. We compare the e ect of sanctions that are introduced exogenously by the experimenter to that of sanctions which have been actively chosen by a subject who takes the role of a fictitious policy maker with superior information about the previous e ort of the other players. We nd that cooperative subjects perceive actively chosen sanctions as a negative signal which eliminates for them the incentive e ect of sanctions.

This article studies crime rates’ response to economic conditions. Using a longitudinal data set covering about 20 countries over the period 1970-2010, we investigate whether crime rates respond asymmetrically to increases in unemployment and recoveries in economic conditions. We find a positive response of crime rates on variation in unemployment rates, but we do not find compelling evidence of asymmetric responses to positive and negative variations in the economic cycle.