Law and Economics Workshop (Speaker: Holger Spamann)

LAW & ECONOMICS WORKSHOP

presents

Professor Holger Spamann
Harvard Law School

 American Exceptionalism Revisited

Tuesday, September 11, 2012
4:10 – 6:00
Solarium (room FA2) – Falconer Hall
84 Queen’s Park

I generate out-of-sample predictions from cross-country regressions for US crime and punishment and compare them to the actual US values. Using only the variables con.rmed in the data, I predict 74% of the actual US homicide rate and 98% of the actual US victimization rate from smaller common crimes, but only 15% of the actual US incarceration rate and a less-than-average probability (17%) of applying the death penalty. In sum, given US background characteristics, US crime rates look normal, while US punishment seems excessive by almost an order of magnitude. This raises the intriguing possibility that much US punishment does not actually contribute to crime control.

Holger Spamann is Assistant Professor at Harvard Law School, where his research and teaching focuses on the law and economics of corporate governance and financial markets. Before embarking on his academic career, he practiced with the law firm Debevoise & Plimpton in New York and clerked for two years in Europe. He holds an A.M. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, a B.Sc. in economics from the London School of Economics, a doctorate in law (S.J.D.) from Harvard Law School, and basic law degrees from the Sorbonne and the University of Hamburg. His recent articles include The “Antidirector Rights Index” Revisited, 23 Review of Financial Studies 467 (2010), and Regulating Bankers’ Pay (with Lucian Bebchuk), 98 Georgetown Law Journal 247 (2010).

For more workshop information, please contact Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca.