446 research outputs found
The Theory of Public Enforcement of Law
No full textThis chapter of the forthcoming Handbook of Law and Economics surveys the theory of the public enforcement of law — the use of governmental agents (regulators, inspectors, tax auditors, police, prosecutors) to detect and to sanction violators of legal rules. The theoretical core of our analysis addresses the following basic questions: Should the form of the sanction imposed on a liable party be a fine, an imprisonment term, or a combination of the two? Should the rule of liability be strict or fault-based? If violators are caught only with a probability, how should the level of the sanction be adjusted? How much of society’s resources should be devoted to apprehending violators? We then examine a variety of extensions of the central theory, including: activity level; errors; the costs of imposing fines; general enforcement; marginal deterrence; the principal-agent relationship; settlements; self-reporting; repeat offenders; imperfect knowledge about the probability and magnitude of sanctions; corruption; incapacitation; costly observation of wealth; social norms; and the fairness of sanctions.public enforcement of law, fines, imprisonment, strict liability, fault-based liability, probability of detection, errors, general enforcement, marginal deterrence, settlements, self-reporting, repeat offenders, fairness of sanctions, norms
The Optimal Use of Fines and Imprisonment When Wealth is Unobservable
No full textThis article studies the optimal use of fines and imprisonment when an offender's level of wealth is private information that cannot be observed by the enforcement authority. In a model in which there are two levels of wealth, I derive the optimal mix of sanctions, including the imprisonment sentence imposed on offenders who do not pay the fine -- referred to as the "alternative" imprisonment sentence. Among other things, I demonstrate that if imprisonment sanctions are used, the optimal alternative imprisonment sentence is sufficiently high that high-wealth individuals prefer to pay a fine exceeding the wealth level of low-wealth individuals and bear a lower (possibly no) imprisonment sentence rather than to pretend to be low-wealth individuals. I also show that if the optimal enforcement system would rely exclusively on fines when wealth is observable, the inability to observe wealth is detrimental because higher fines then could not be levied on higher-wealth individuals. In this case, it may be desirable when wealth is unobservable to impose an imprisonment sentence on offenders who do not pay the fine -- who will be low-wealth offenders -- in order to induce high-wealth offenders to pay the fine. However, if the optimal enforcement system would employ both fines and imprisonment sentences when wealth is observable, the inability to observe wealth is not detrimental. In this case, the same sanctions would be chosen if wealth is unobservable and these sanctions lead high-wealth individuals to pay more than low-wealth individuals.
Public Enforcement of Law
No full textThis entry for the forthcoming The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics (Second Edition) surveys the economic analysis of public enforcement of law — the use of public agents (inspectors, tax auditors, police, prosecutors) to detect and to sanction violators of legal rules. We first discuss the basic elements of the theory: the probability of imposition of sanctions, the magnitude and form of sanctions (fines, imprisonment), and the rule of liability. We then examine a variety of extensions, including the costs of imposing fines, mistake, marginal deterrence, settlement, self-reporting, repeat offenses, and incapacitation.fines, imprisonment, probability of detection, sanctions, crime, enforcement, strict liability, fault-based liability, mistake, marginal deterrence, settlement, self-reporting, repeat offenses, incapacitation
Economic Analysis of Law
No full textThis entry for the forthcoming The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics (Second Edition) surveys the economic analysis of five primary fields of law: property law; liability for accidents; contract law; litigation; and public enforcement and criminal law. It also briefly considers some criticisms of the economic analysis of law.law and economics, property law, liability for accidents, contract law, litigation, public enforcement, criminal law
Strict Liability versus Negligence in a Market Setting
No full textThis paper formally analyzes strict liability and negligence in a market setting. The discussion emphasizes the impact of the rules on the market price and on the number of firms in the industry. For simplicity, the damage caused by each firm is assumed to be determined only by that firm's "care" (and not also by the firm's output or the victim's behavior).
Are Tumor Suppressor Genes Playing a Role in the Deregulation of Tissue Organization in Cancer?
No full textEmpirical Evidence on Prisoners’ Discount Rates
No full textListokin has recently drawn our attention to the fact that virtually nothing is known about the magnitude of prisoners’ discount rates in relation to their foregone income (legal or illegal), which incarceration implies. He argues that since prisoners are likely to exhibit high discount rates, pre sentence delays will impose higher costs on offenders not on bail compared with those who are granted bail by the court. Utilising actual plea choices made by a sample of not on bail prisoners for three different offences in NSW, this study derives convincing estimates of prisoners’ rates of time preference. Prisoners do discount future returns and at high rates, as predicted by criminologists and other scholars, who have addressed this issue theoretically. The modelling technique utilised in this paper (dynamic present value) captures the stochastic movement of the prisoner’s probability of conviction during the delay period. This is a considerable methodological improvement over the standard static present value technique, which is not appropriate to capture the dynamics of the final plea choice.
Through the looking-glass, and how causatives look there
No full textDescriptive and Comparative Linguistic
Linguistic Impact on the Use of the Reliable Digit Span for Performance Validity in a Sample of English-Spanish Bilingual Adults
No full textPerformance validity tests (PVTs) are used alongside neuropsychological assessments to help detect suspect effort. One of the most widely used PVTs, the Reliable Digit Span (RDS), and its latest version, the RDS-revised (RDS-R), have been widely accepted as valid and reliable within the general population. However, as the United States becomes increasingly globalized, questions arise regarding the validity of language-based tests such as the RDS and RDS-R amongst English-Spanish bilingual populations. This study used a within-subject design with 28 bilingual undergraduate students, testing them on the Digit Span (the test that RDS results are based on) in both English and Spanish to determine whether one’s language proficiency impacted failure rates in one language versus another. Results demonstrated significant differences in overall syllable load for each language, indicating that the test is more cognitively challenging in Spanish than in English. Despite significant differences in performance on the RDS and RDS-R based on the language of administration, these differences were insufficient to result in significant discrepancies in classification. However, a nonsignificant trend suggested that a similar analysis conducted with a larger sample might produce significant differences in classification rates. Acculturation did not factor into PVT performance. The results provide initial support for the use of the measure in either English or Spanish. However, before results are generalized, future research can consider replication of cutoff norms for bilinguals using larger and broader samples and more specific differences amongst varying bilingual populations
No objections to backward control?
No full textThe aim of this paper is to address two main counterarguments raised in Landau (2007) against the movement analysis of Control, and especially against the phenomenon of Backward Control. The paper shows that unlike the situation described in Tsez (Polinsky & Potsdam 2002), Landau's objections do not hold for Greek and Romanian, where all obligatory control verbs exhibit Backward Control. Our results thus provide stronger empirical support for a theoretical approach to Control in terms of Movement, as defended in Hornstein (1999 and subsequent work)
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