法律翻译 | 《法与经济学杂志》第60卷第3期
译者 | 薛元涤 北京大学国际法学院
一审 | 刘 寅 西南政法大学
二审 | 李正茂 香港大学
编辑 | 吴 萌 上海外国语大学
仲飞宇 西安外国语大学
责编 | 李 薇 浙江工商大学
The Journal of Law and Economics
Volume 60, Number 3 | 2017
《法与经济学杂志》第60卷第3期
1
Tort Reform and Innovation
侵权法改革与创新
Alberto Galasso and Hong Luo
Current academic and policy debates focus on the impact of tort reforms on physicians’ behavior and medical costs. This paper examines whether these reforms also affect incentives to develop new technologies. We develop a theoretical model that predicts that the impact of reducing liability risks for physicians on innovation may be positive or negative, depending on the characteristics of the technology. Empirically, we find that, on average, laws that limit the liability exposure of health care providers are associated with a significant reduction in medical device patenting. Tort reforms have the strongest impact in medical fields in which the probability of facing a malpractice claim is the largest, and they do not seem to affect the number of new technologies of the highest and lowest quality. Our results underscore the importance of considering dynamic effects in the economic analysis of tort laws.
当前，学界和政策争论的焦点是侵权法改革对医生行为和医疗成本的影响，而本文则考察了该改革是否会影响人们研发新技术的动力。笔者通过构建理论模型的方式，预测医生责任风险的降低对创新产生的影响因技术特点而异。笔者发现，经验证据表明限制医疗服务提供者责任风险的法律通常与医疗设备专利申请数量大幅减少有关联。侵权法改革对医疗领域的影响最大，因为在该领域中，从业者面临失职行为索赔的概率最大。同时，侵权法改革似乎并不影响质量最高和质量最低的新技术数量。笔者的研究结果强调了在侵权法经济分析中考虑动态效应的重要性。
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2
Valuing the Right to Sue:
An Empirical Examination of
Nonprofit Agency Costs
起诉权评估：
非营利组织代理成本的实证研究
Brian Galle
Do stakeholders’ suits against managers reduce agency costs? I examine this question using a large panel of private-foundation tax returns and hand-collected data on state-law variations in the right of donors to sue wayward managers of nonprofits. In both difference-in-differences and triple-difference estimations, I find on average that standing to sue substantially increases donations and reduces the share of firms’ expenses devoted to administrative costs among private foundations. These outcomes are robust to other estimating strategies, such as propensity-score matching and regression adjustment with inverse probability weights. Coefficients are smaller and less precise among large operating charities. I argue that my results weigh in favor of expanded donor standing to sue, at least for foundations. My findings also suggest that the agency costs of philanthropic organizations are substantial, which has implications for, among other policy debates, tax policies that encourage perpetual lived philanthropy.
利益相关者起诉管理者是否会降低代理成本？为了研究这一问题，笔者使用了私人基金会纳税申报表的大型面板数据，手工收集了州法律有关捐赠者起诉非营利组织管理者权利差异的数据。笔者通过双重差分和三重差分估计法发现，平均而言，起诉权显著增加了对私人基金会的捐款，并减少了公司支出中的行政成本。在使用其他估计策略，如倾向评分匹配和逆概加权法时，本文的结论依然稳健。其中，大型慈善机构的回归系数更小，精确度也更低。因此，至少对基金会而言，本文的研究结果能支持扩大捐赠者起诉权。此外，该结果还表明慈善组织的代理成本相当可观。这对激励永续慈善的税收政策以及其他相关政策辩论都有启示意义。
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3
Stock Trades of Securities and
Exchange Commission Employees
证券交易委员会员工的股票交易情况
Shivaram Rajgopal and Roger M. White
We examine the profitability of stock trades executed by Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) employees. Subject to the considerable constraints of the data (no portfolio information, occupational details, or individual identifiers and an inability to determine profitability of trades), we find that a hedge portfolio mimicking such trades earns a positive abnormal return of about 8.5 percent per year in US stocks, driven primarily by negative abnormal future returns on sell transactions. The SEC claims that this result stems in part from employees being forced to sell stocks in a firm when they are assigned to secret investigations. We question whether this policy is reasonable.
笔者研究了美国证券交易委员会(SEC)员工进行股票交易的盈利情况。受数据的诸多限制（如没有投资组合信息、职业详情、个人身份信息和无法确定交易的盈利情况），笔者发现，模仿此类交易的对冲投资组合每年在美股可以获得约8.5%的超额投资收益。这主要是由未来卖出交易的超额损失造成的。美国证券交易委员会(SEC)声称，造成这一结果的部分原因是员工在被指派进行秘密调查时被迫卖出对应公司的股票。笔者质疑这一政策的合理性。
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4
Electoral Cycles among US Courts of
Appeals Judges
选举周期中的美国上诉法院法官
Carlos Berdejó and Daniel L. Chen
We find field evidence consistent with experimental studies that document the contexts and characteristics making individuals more susceptible to priming. Just before US presidential elections, judges on the US courts of appeals double the rate at which they dissent and vote along partisan lines. Increases are accentuated for judges with less experience and in polarized environments. During periods of national unity—wartime, for example—judges suppress dissents, especially if they have less experience or are in polarized environments. We show that the dissent rate increases gradually from 6 percent to nearly 12 percent in the quarter before an election and returns immediately to 6 percent after the election. If highly experienced professionals making common-law precedent can be politically primed, it raises questions about the perceived impartiality of the judiciary.
以往的实验研究记录了个体更易受启动效应（priming）影响的环境和特征，而笔者则发现了与其一致的实地证据。就在美国总统大选前夕，美国上诉法院的法官提出异议和按照党派立场投票的比例增加了一倍。当法官经验较少和处于极化环境中时，该增长幅度更为明显。而在如战争等国家需要团结的时候，法官很少提出异议，尤其是经验较少或处于极化环境中的法官。笔者的研究表明，在大选前的一个季度，法官的异议率从 6% 逐步上升至近 12%，而在大选结束后，异议率又立即恢复到 6%。如果经验丰富的法官们在制定普通法先例时会受到政治因素的影响，那么人们就会质疑司法机构公正性。
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5
Speeding, Punishment, and
Recidivism: Evidence from a
Regression Discontinuity Design
超速、惩罚和累犯：
来自断点回归设计的证据
Markus Gehrsitz
This paper estimates the effects of temporary driver’s license suspensions on driving behavior. A little-known rule in the German traffic penalty schedule maintains that drivers who commit a series of speeding offenses within 365 days should have their licenses suspended for 1 month. My regression discontinuity design exploits the quasi-random assignment of license suspensions caused by the 365-day cutoff and shows that 1-month license suspensions lower the probability of recidivating within a year by 20 percent. This is largely a specific-deterrence effect driven by the punishment itself and not by incapacitation, information asymmetries, or the threat of stiffer future penalties.
本文估计了临时吊销驾照对驾驶行为的影响。德国交通处罚标准中有一条鲜为人知的规定，即在 365 天内连续超速的驾驶员应被吊销驾照 1 个月。笔者的断点回归设计利用了以365 天为截止日的驾照吊销准随机分配作为研究场景。结果表明，吊销驾照 1 个月可将驾驶员一年内重新犯罪的概率降低 20%。这在很大程度上是由惩罚本身所产生的特定威慑效应造成的，并非由于驾驶员丧失行为能力、信息不对称或未来更严厉惩罚的威胁。
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6
The Unintended Impact of Pretrial
Detention on Case Outcomes:
Evidence from New York City Arraignments
审前羁押对案件结果的意外影响：
来自纽约市传讯的证据
Emily Leslie and Nolan G. Pope
In the United States, over 400,000 individuals are in jail daily waiting for their criminal cases to be resolved. The majority of detainees are held because they cannot post bail. We estimate the impact of being detained pretrial on the likelihood of being convicted and sentence length using data on nearly a million criminal cases in New York City. Causal effects are identified using variation across arraignment judges in their propensities to detain defendants. We find that being detained increases the probability of conviction by 13 percentage points for felony defendants. Although pretrial detention lowers the probability of rearrest while cases are being adjudicated, this reduction in criminal activity is mostly offset by an increase in recidivism within 2 years after disposition. Higher pretrial detention rates among minority defendants explain 40 percent of the black-white gap in rates of being sentenced to prison and 28 percent of the Hispanic-white gap.
在美国，每天有超过40万人在监狱里等待他们的刑事案件得以解决。他们中的大多数因为无法缴纳保释金而继续被羁押。笔者利用纽约市近100万起刑事案件的数据，估计了审前羁押对定罪可能性和刑期的影响。笔者还利用了传讯法官对于羁押被告的倾向差异来识别其因果关系。本文发现，审前羁押使得重罪被告的定罪概率增加了13 %。这虽然同时降低了被告在案件审理期间再次被捕的概率，但这种犯罪活动的减少大多被判决后两年内再犯率的上升所抵消。其中，少数族裔被告的审前羁押率较高。这解释了为什么黑人与白人在被判刑入狱率方面有着40%的差距，以及拉美裔与白人有着28%的差距。
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原文链接：https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/jle/2017/60/3
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