IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_11929.html

The Economic Costs of Ambiguous Laws

Author

Listed:
  • Tommaso Giommoni
  • Luigi Guiso
  • Claudio Michelacci
  • Massimo Morelli

Abstract

We develop a strategy to measure the economic costs of poorly written laws, a potential threat to the rule of law. Using the full corpus of Italian legislation, we show that legal uncertainty - measured by the probability of disagreement between the Supreme Court of Cassation and lower courts - is higher for cases involving poorly written laws and varies systematically across courts. To identify the economic impacts, we exploit a reform that reassigned firms to courts. We estimate that GDP would be 5 percent higher if laws had been written as clearly as the Constitution, with two-thirds of the loss accruing over the past 20 years.

Suggested Citation

  • Tommaso Giommoni & Luigi Guiso & Claudio Michelacci & Massimo Morelli, 2025. "The Economic Costs of Ambiguous Laws," CESifo Working Paper Series 11929, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11929
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/cesifo1_wp11929.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Abel, Andrew B & Eberly, Janice C, 1994. "A Unified Model of Investment under Uncertainty," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(5), pages 1369-1384, December.
    2. Leo Katz, 2010. "A Theory of Loopholes," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 39(1), pages 1-31, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christopher F. Baum & Mustafa Caglayan & Oleksandr Talavera, 2010. "On the sensitivity of firms' investment to cash flow and uncertainty," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 62(2), pages 286-306, April.
    2. Chen, Yu-Fu & Funke, Michael, 2008. "Product market competition, investment and employment-abundant versus job-poor growth: A real options perspective," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 24(1), pages 218-238, March.
    3. Ádám Reiff, 2010. "Firm-level adjustment costs and aggregate investment dynamics – Estimation on Hungarian data," MNB Working Papers 2010/2, Magyar Nemzeti Bank (Central Bank of Hungary).
    4. Chen Yu-Fu & Funke Michael, 2004. "Working Time and Employment Under Uncertainty," Studies in Nonlinear Dynamics & Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 8(3), pages 1-23, September.
    5. Nick Bloom & Stephen Bond & John Van Reenen, 2007. "Uncertainty and Investment Dynamics," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(2), pages 391-415.
    6. Hjalmar Böhm & Michael Funke & Nikolaus A. Siegfried, 1999. "Discovering the Link between Uncertainty and Investment - Microeconometric Evidence from Germany," Quantitative Macroeconomics Working Papers 19906, Hamburg University, Department of Economics.
    7. Pathak, Jalaj, 2025. "Impact of judgment readability on financial crimes," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    8. Andrea Gamba & Alessio Saretto, 2022. "Endogenous Option Pricing," Working Papers 2202, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
    9. Miao, Jianjun & Wang, Neng, 2007. "Investment, consumption, and hedging under incomplete markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(3), pages 608-642, December.
    10. José María Serena & Ricardo Sousa, 2017. "Does exchange rate depreciation have contractionary effects on firm-level investment?," BIS Working Papers 624, Bank for International Settlements.
    11. Feil, Jan-Henning & Musshoff, Oliver, 2013. "Investment, disinvestment and policy impact analysis in the dairy sector: a real options approach," Structural Change in Agriculture/Strukturwandel im Agrarsektor (SiAg) Working Papers 159229, Humboldt University Berlin, Department of Agricultural Economics.
    12. Chia-Hsin Chiang & Helen Choy & Yan-Jie Yang & Shu-Ling Yeh, 2025. "Strategic alignment between supply chain partners and cost stickiness of suppliers," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 64(2), pages 941-999, February.
    13. Raouf Boucekkine & Bruno de Oliveira Cruz, 2015. "Technological Progress and Investment: A Non-Technical Survey," AMSE Working Papers 1519, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    14. Cujean, Julien & Bustamante, Maria Cecilia & Frésard, Laurent, 2019. "Knowledge Cycles and Corporate Investment," CEPR Discussion Papers 14152, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Banker, Rajiv D. & Byzalov, Dmitri & Chen, Lei (Tony), 2013. "Employment protection legislation, adjustment costs and cross-country differences in cost behavior," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 111-127.
    16. Amaresh K Tiwari, 2023. "Automation In An Open, Catching-Up Economy: Aggregate And Microeconometric Evidence," University of Tartu - Faculty of Economics and Business Administration Working Paper Series 144, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, University of Tartu (Estonia).
    17. Haotian Xiang, 2019. "Time Inconsistency and Financial Covenants," 2019 Meeting Papers 63, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    18. Nilsen, Oivind A. & Salvanes, Kjell G. & Schiantarelli, Fabio, 2007. "Employment changes, the structure of adjustment costs, and plant size," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(3), pages 577-598, April.
    19. Denny IRAWAN & Tatsuyoshi OKIMOTO, 2021. "How Do ESG Performance and Awareness Affect Firm Value and Corporate Overinvestment?," Discussion papers 21033, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    20. repec:zbw:bofitp:2008_029 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Caballero, Ricardo J., 1999. "Aggregate investment," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 12, pages 813-862, Elsevier.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • A10 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - General
    • E0 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General
    • K00 - Law and Economics - - General - - - General (including Data Sources and Description)

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_11929. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.