"This paper uses a microlevel data set from 49 countries to create a direct measure of corruption, which portrays the extent of bribery as revealed by individuals who live in those countries. In addition, it investigates the determinants of being asked for a bribe at the individual level. The results show that both personal and country characteristics determine the risk of exposure to bribery. Examples are gender, income, education, marital status, the city size, the country's unemployment rate, average education, and the strength of the institutions in the country. "("JEL "K4, D73 P16) Copyright (c) 2008 Western Economic Association International.

This paper utilizes a micro-level data set from 49 countries to address three issues: What determines corruption at the individual level? What determines the perception of the extent of corruption in the country? Does corruption have a direct impact on growth when the quality of the institutions are controlled for? In addition, the paper creates a direct measure of corruption which portrays the extent of corruption as revealed byindividuals who live in those countries. The results show that both personal and country characteristics determine the risk of exposure to bribery. Examples are gender, wealth, education, marital status, the city size, the legal origin of the country, the existence of uninterrupted democracy, a war between 1960s and 1980s, and the strength of the institutions in the country (measured by the risk of expropriation). The second part of the paper shows that controlling for endogeneity of corruption and institutional quality, actual corruption in the country and the proportion of the bribes asked by various government agencies have no direct impact on corruption perception. On the other hand, an improvement in the quality of institutions lowers the perception of corruption. The final section of the paper shows that controlling for the quality of the institutions, corruption does not have a direct impact on growth. Keeping constant the geographical location of the country, the legal origin, religious composition, the presence of a war, the federal status, initial education and income as well as the extent of corruption in the country, a one-half standard deviation increase in the quality of institutions (e.g. from the level of Indonesia to the level of India), generates an additional 0.7 percentage point increase in the average annual per capita GDP growth.

This paper investigates the impact of economics conditions (carrots) and sanctions (sticks) on murder, assault, robbery, burglary and motor vehicle theft in New York City, using monthly time-series data spanning 1974-1999. Carrots are measured by the unemployment rate and the real minimum wage; sticks are measured by felony arrests, police force and New York City residents in prison. In addition, the paper tests the validity of the "broken windows" hypothesis, where misdemeanor arrests are used as a measure of broken windows policing. The broken windows hypothesis has validity in case of robbery and motor vehicle theft. The models explain between 33 and 86 percent of the observed decline in these crimes between 1990 and 1999. While both economic and deterrence variables are important in explaining the decline in crime, the contribution of deterrence measures is larger than those of economic variables.

Rationality, Child care, Adverse selection, D2, L3, J13,

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Employing the universe of juvenile court decisions in a US state between 1996 and 2012, we analyze the effects of emotional shocks associated with unexpected outcomes of football games played by a prominent college team in the state. We find that unexpected losses increase sentence lengths assigned by judges during the week following the game. Unexpected wins, or losses that were expected to be close contests ex ante have no impact. The effects of these emotional shocks are asymmetrically borne by black defendants. The impact of upset losses on sentence lengths is larger for defendants if their cases are handled by judges who received their bachelor's degrees from the university with which the football team is affiliated. Different falsification tests and a number of auxiliary analyses demonstrate the robustness of the findings. These results provide evidence for the impact of emotions in one domain on decisions in a completely unrelated domain among a uniformly highly educated group of individuals (judges) who make decisions after deliberation that involve high stakes (sentence lengths). They also point to the existence of a subtle and previously unnoticed capricious application of sentencing. (JEL D83, I23, J13, J15, K42, L83, Z21)

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