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The Effect Of Statutory Rape Laws On Teen Birth Rates, Michael D. Frakes, Matthew C. Harding
The Effect Of Statutory Rape Laws On Teen Birth Rates, Michael D. Frakes, Matthew C. Harding
Faculty Scholarship
Policymakers have often been explicit in expanding statutory rape laws to reduce teenage pregnancies and live births by teenage mothers, often with the goal of reducing associated welfare outlays. In this paper, we explore whether expansions in such laws are indeed associated with reductions in teen birth rates. In order to codify statutory-rape-law expansions, we use a national micro-level sample of sexual encounters to simulate the degree to which such encounters generally implicate the relevant laws. By codifying statutory-rape laws in terms of their potential reach into sexual encounters, as opposed to using crude binary treatment variables, this simulation approach …
Some Notes On Property Rules, Liability Rules, And Criminal Law, Keith N. Hylton
Some Notes On Property Rules, Liability Rules, And Criminal Law, Keith N. Hylton
Faculty Scholarship
The property-liability rules framework, which offers a robust positive theory of criminal law, has come under attack in recent years. One critique, which I label the Indifference Proposition, argues that property rules and liability rules are equivalent in low transaction cost settings. In this paper I examine the conditions under which the Indifference Proposition is valid. In several plausible low transaction-cost settings the proposition is not valid.