Margherita Saraceno

• Associate Professor at University of Pavia

This study investigates—both theoretically and by means of a controlled laboratory experiment—judges’ decisions in cases when either “type-I” errors (i.e., convicting an innocent defendant) or “type-II” errors (i.e., acquitting a guilty defendant) can occur. Our findings indicate that judges are sensitive to both types of error. Furthermore, in bot...

The present model focuses on how people decide to get vaccinated, based on their beliefs and costs and on the public information concerning the disease severity, that in turn depends on the vaccination coverage. This interplay between beliefs and outcomes gives rise to a dynamical learning process, whose steady state is a self-fulfilling equilibriu...

This study experimentally investigates the role of the origin of victims' resources on the propensity to settle or litigate a dispute. The analysis focuses on victims’ decision to use a costly and uncertain procedure, that is, litigation, to recover money from offenders and on offenders’ decision to hand over what they have taken before litigation...

Anecdotal evidence shows that lockdowns and measures made against the effects of COVID-19 pandemic have contributed to increased domestic violence everywhere. Determining why domestic violence increases during the pandemic might help us understand the phenomenon and define suitable interventions for contrasting domestic violence and its consequence...

The present Bayes-conjectural model focuses on a single defendant repeatedly formulating settlement offers when facing a heterogeneous population of victims. As usual, victims are risk-averse. However, the defendant cannot know the victims’ characteristics or their distribution. The defendant is endowed with an initial conjecture on the victims’ ag...

Excessive and useless reporting, called the “crying wolf effect,” is a crucial shortcoming that any anti-money laundering (AML) design aims to address. For this reason, in recent years, AML policies in both the US and Europe have switched from a rule-based to a risk-based approach. This study theoretically and empirically investigates whether the r...

Evidence emerging from our novel in-prison survey shows that non-criminal legal problems of prison inmates mainly relate to family law matters, contract liability, and administrative procedures. The rate of subjects who face legal issues increases after imprisonment. Employing logit estimation techniques, we test the hypothesis according to which i...

Analisi dei testi pubblicati dal Governo e dalle province relativi alle restrizioni applicate per l'emergenza Covid-19 e trasformazione di tali testi in un dataset per la costruzione di indicatori relativi a diverse tipologie di restrizioni. Confronto dell'andamento degli indicatori con l'andamento di vari aspetti relativi alla pandemia (considerat...

This study investigates the efficiency of suspicious transaction reporting activity to a financial intelligence unit as a means to deter money laundering. Baseline and two-province theoretical models are used to frame the empirical analysis. The latter examines the relationship between suspicious transaction reporting and the vulnerability of Itali...

When adjudication is not perfectly accurate, litigants with unmeritorious cases may benefit from court errors, which in turn may result in a dilution of incentives for primary behavior and frivolous litigation. We study how shifting the court fees to the loser may improve the accuracy of adjudication. If litigation costs are high, the American rule...

In 2011, to manage the exceptional flow of people escaping North Africa, the Italian government released the North Africa Emergency (Emergenza Nord Africa, ENA) provision, temporarily relaxing migration policies for some categories of asylum seekers. Using data from an important charity, we perform baseline difference-in-differences regressions to...

This paper examines the economy's vulnerability to money laundering in a given region. Assuming that criminals are rational investors who take into account risks and returns of both legal and illegal investments, we define vulnerability as a function of well-identified drivers. Proxies of these variables are used to empirically investigate the rela...

This paper investigates the effects of the intra-European posting of workers on domestic labour markets in the years 2007–2009. Instrumental variables related to neighbouring countries’ populations are used to address the endogeneity between posting and labour market features. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find that an intensification of post...

This study explicitly elucidates the relationship between litigation and access to justice. In considering access issues, this study shows that the effects of policies affecting parties’ litigation decisions partially depart from those in the standard literature. For instance, increasing parties’ litigation costs does not necessarily promote settle...

This study adds to the literature on how both plaintiffs' beliefs and legal precedent affect access to justice. It also studies how actual accesses to the judiciary result, in turn, in the establishment of further precedent that is able to affect the behavior of new prospective plaintiffs. The analysis is based on a micro-founded Bayesian learning...

Emergency rules temporarily modifying migration regulation can be seen as natural experiments that can be exploited to assess the effectiveness of migration policies. In 2011, the Italian Government released the North Africa Emergency Provisions (ENA) temporarily relaxing immigration policies for refugees who fled to Italy as a consequence of the A...

Litigation imposes large costs on society; this justifies settlement considerations. In any case, access to justice is critical to socioeconomic development; as such, it needs to be balanced with litigation minimization. This study examines the tradeoff between litigation and access to justice and explicitly elucidates their relationship. In consid...

Anecdotal evidence exists that migrants experience difficulties in complying with Italian immigration rules (i.e., residence permit applications and renewals), given the country’s intricate and inconsistent legal framework. As a consequence, migrants often require legal assistance in regularizing their status. In 2011, to manage the exceptional flo...

This paper investigates the effects of the intra-European posting of workers on domestic labour markets in the years 2007-2009. Instrumental variables related to migrant labour and neighbouring countries’ populations are used to address the endogeneity between posting and labour market features. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find that an inte...

Anecdotal evidence exists that migrants experience difficulties in complying with Italian immigration rules (i.e. permit of stay applications and renewals) because of an intricate and inconstant legal framework. As a consequence, migrants often need legal assistance in order to regularize their status. In 2011, in order to manage the exceptional fl...

The dynamics of executive compensation represents a critical issue, especially in the financial industry. There is evidence that even during the recent financial crisis CEOs were rewarded with disproportionate bonuses, a phenomenon that stands in vivid contrast with the wave of securities litigation that took place in that period as a consequence o...

The dynamic of executive compensation represents a critical issue, especially in the financial sector. There is evidence that even during the recent financial crisis CEOs have been awarded with disproportionate bonuses, a phenomenon which vividly contrasts with the wave of securities litigations that took place in that period as a consequence of ma...

It is generally agreed that the conviction of an innocent person (type-I error) should be avoided even at the cost of allowing a certain number of acquittals of criminals (type-II error). The high standard of evidence that is usually required in criminal procedure reflects this principle. Conversely, the established model of optimal deterrence that...

By comparing the behavior of those US banks which faced Securities Class Actions (SCAs) in the 2000-2008 period with a control group of non-sued banks, we investigate the regulatory effects of this collective litigation procedure. The paper improves upon previous research by accounting for the endogenous nature of SCAs with respect to bank performa...

This paper investigates whether securities class actions (SCAs) can play a role in banking supervision, both as a warning signal of insolvency and as an instrument of market discipline to encourage bank managers to carefully evaluate risk. Two groups of US banks are compared over the 2000–2008 period. One includes banks that have faced at least o...

The principle that it is better to let some guilty individuals be set free than to mistakenly convict an innocent person is generally shared by legal scholars, judges and lawmakers of modern societies. The paper shows why this common trait of criminal procedure is also efficient. It extends the standard Polinsky and Shavell (2007) model of deterren...

This paper presents a simple model of disputes resolution both from a macro-perspective (social planner's problem) and from a micro-perspective (parties' choice). Furthermore, it analyzes the effects of a number of policies on: a) victim's access to justice, b) parties' choice between settlement and litigation, c) social costs of disputes resolutio...

Policy makers are currently evaluating group litigation as a device to guarantee effective access to justice and to improve deterrence in torts with multiple victims. This paper focuses on how group litigation affects: 1) access to justice, 2) the choice between settlement and litigation, 3) the settlement amount, and finally, 4) deterrence. The ma...

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