Public enforcement of law

Polinsky, Maria; Shavell, Steven

doi:10.4337/9781781950210.00006

Cited by 22 publications

(19 citation statements)

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“…The practice of granting enforcement monopolies to private parties generated considerable opposition from Parliament and the courts and was eventually banned. 27 Unfortunately, the fact that rewards were usually one half of the fines does not accord with theory. The previous sections of this article would suggest that the reward should vary with the fine, the harm, and the cost of effort.…”

Section: Minor Offenses Prosecuted By Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Corruption and Private Law Enforcement: Theory and History

Garoupa

Klerman

2009

SSRN Journal

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Section: Minor Offenses Prosecuted By Informationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Corruption and Private Law Enforcement: Theory and History

Garoupa

Klerman

2009

SSRN Journal

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“…Thereafter, this extension has been generally incorporated in the economic literature on crime deterrence (see e.g. Kaplow, 1994;Garoupa, 1997;Polinsky and Shavell, 2008). Within this framework, the e ects of judicial errors on deterrence are expected to be symmetric, since the probabilities of type-I and type-II errors have the same impact on the di erence between the returns from honesty and from crime.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Judicial Errors and Crime Deterrence: Theory and Experimental Evidence

Rizzolli

Stanca

2012

The Journal of Law and Economics

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The standard economic theory of crime deterrence predicts that the conviction of an innocent (type-I error) is as detrimental to deterrence as the acquittal of a guilty individual (type-II error). In this paper, we qualify this result theoretically, showing that in the presence of risk aversion, loss-aversion, or di erential sensitivity to procedural fairness, type-I errors can have a larger e ect on deterrence than type-II errors. We test these predictions with an experiment where participants make a decision on whether to steal from other individuals, being subject to di erent probabilities of judicial errors. The results indicate that both types of judicial errors have a large and signi cant impact on deterrence, but these e ects are not symmetric. An increase in the probability of type-I errors has a larger negative impact on deterrence than an equivalent increase in the probability of type-II errors. This asymmetry is largely explained by risk aversion and, to a lesser extent, type-I error aversion.

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“…28 When individuals are wealth constrained, as discussed in the literature (see, e.g. Polinsky and Shavell (2007)), it may be optimal to resort to non-monetary and therefore costly means of punishing individuals. The case of costly sanctions is briefly discussed in Section 4.2.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…For models dealing with optimal penalty schemes for repeat offenders see Chu et al (2000), Emons (2003Emons ( , 2004, Miceli and Bucci (2005), Mungan (2010Mungan ( , 2012, Polinsky and Shavell (1998), and Polinsky and Rubinfeld (1991). For a general review of the law and economics literature on law enforcement, see Garoupa (1997), Polinsky and Shavell (2000), and Polinsky and Shavell (2007).…”

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“…3 Specifically, by using an optimal deterrence model -as in Polinsky and Shavell (2007) -I demonstrate that warnings ought to be used more frequently when society has less information concerning the illegality of the criminalized act. For this purpose, I incorporate hybrid warning strategies, which have not yet been formalized in the literature despite their frequent use.…”

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Optimal Warning Strategies: Punishment Ought Not to Be Inflicted Where the Penal Provision Is Not Properly Conveyed

Mungan

2013

Review of Law &Amp; Economics

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Law enforcers frequently issue warnings, as opposed to sanctions, when they detect first-time offenders. However, virtually all of the law and economics literature dealing with optimal penalty schemes for repeat offenders suggest that issuing warnings is a sub-optimal practice. Another observed phenomenon is the joint use of warnings and sanctions in law enforcement: person A may receive a sanction, whereas person B is only warned for committing the same offense. This situation can be explained through the use of hybrid warning strategies, a concept not yet formalized in the law enforcement literature, where law enforcers issue warnings to x% and sanctions to ð100 À xÞ% of first-time offenders. This article uses a two-period optimal deterrence model to provide a rationale as to why it may be optimal to issue warnings. When uninformed individuals are present and their punishment is assumed to be costly, there is a trade-off between such costs and reduced levels of deterrence. Depending on the cost structure associated with the punishment of uninformed individuals, warning strategies, including hybrid ones, may be optimal. A secondary contribution of this article is to point out that lack of information concerning laws may lead to optimal escalating punishments for repeat offenders.

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Public enforcement of law

Cited by 22 publications

References 0 publications

Corruption and Private Law Enforcement: Theory and History

Corruption and Private Law Enforcement: Theory and History

Judicial Errors and Crime Deterrence: Theory and Experimental Evidence

Optimal Warning Strategies: Punishment Ought Not to Be Inflicted Where the Penal Provision Is Not Properly Conveyed

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