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4 Rev. L & Econ. 1 (2008)

handle is hein.journals/rvleco4 and id is 1 raw text is: Paying the Price for Being Caught: The Economics of Manifest and Non-Manifest Theft in Roman Law* NUNO GAROUPA,** FERNANDO GOMEZ POMAR University of Illinois College of Law, IMDEA & CEPR; Universitat Pompeu Fabra In Roman law, manifest theft (essentialy, one in which a thief was caught in the act) was punished nith a more severe penaly than non-manfest theft. This legal pody seems to contradict the economic theof of effident deterrence. In this paer, we tU to explore how economic analysis of eriminal law and law enforcement points to several efficieng-based arguments to understand the puggle, and allows us to tentatively conclude that technological changes in law enforcement in the broad sense might have been the majorfactor in the disappearance of the rule in modern legal sjstems. 1. INTRODUCTION Legal-economic history can be seen as the application of Law and Economics as a methodology to the study of legal history. The use of economic analysis in legal history, we believe, can make positive contributions to the understanding of * We are grateful to one anonymous referee, as well as Giuseppe Dan-Mattiacci, Antonio Hespanha, Bruce Johnsen, Daniel Klerman, Bruce Kobayashi, Craig Lerner, Ifigo Ortiz de Urbina, Francesco Parisi, Maurici Perez-Simeon, Eric Posner, Olivia Robinson, Steven Shavell, and Alan Watson for extremely helpful suggestions and comments. Part of the paper was written when both authors were Visiting Professors at George Mason University School of Law, whose hospitality and the opportunity to present an earlier version of this paper at the Levy workshop is gratefully acknowledged. The paper has also benefited from comments at the CEPR conference on Crime and Conflict, Marseilles. Nuno Garoupa acknowledges fnancial support from Nova Forum and the Portuguese Ministry of Higher Education and Science. Fernando Gomez acknowledges fnancial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology. The usual disclaimers apply. ** Professor of Law, University of Illinois College of Law, 504 East Pennsylvania Avenue, Champaign, IL 61820. Email: ngaroupa@law.uiuc.edu. *** Professor of Law and Economics, School of Law, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, C/ Ramon Trias Fargas 25-27, 08005 Barcelona, Spain. Email: femando.gomez@upf.edu.

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