IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jleorg/v25y2009i2p442-471.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Corruption, Extortion, and the Boundaries of the Law

Author

Abstract

We consider a setup in which a principal must decide whether or not to legalize a socially undesirable activity. The law is enforced by a monitor who may be bribed to conceal evidence of the offense and who may also engage in extortionary practices. The principal may legalize the activity even if it is a very harmful one. The principal may also declare the activity illegal knowing that the monitor will abuse the law to extract bribes out of innocent people. Our model offers a novel rationale for legalizing possession and consumption of drugs while continuing to prosecute drug dealers. (JEL D82, L22, K4) The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Yale University. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org, Oxford University Press.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicolas Melissas, 2009. "Corruption, Extortion, and the Boundaries of the Law," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 25(2), pages 442-471, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jleorg:v:25:y:2009:i:2:p:442-471
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jleo/ewn009
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mishra, Ajit, 2002. "Hierarchies, incentives and collusion in a model of enforcement," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 165-178, February.
    2. Hindriks, Jean & Keen, Michael & Muthoo, Abhinay, 1999. "Corruption, extortion and evasion," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(3), pages 395-430, December.
    3. Kugler, Maurice & Verdier, Thierry & Zenou, Yves, 2005. "Organized crime, corruption and punishment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(9-10), pages 1639-1663, September.
    4. Kessler, Anke S., 2000. "On Monitoring and Collusion in Hierarchies," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 280-291, April.
    5. Paolo Mauro, 1995. "Corruption and Growth," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(3), pages 681-712.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Karna Basu & Kaushik Basu & Tito Cordella, 2016. "Asymmetric Punishment as an Instrument of Corruption Control," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 18(6), pages 831-856, December.
    2. Yun Sungho, 2012. "Costs of Engaging in Corruption: Equilibrium with Extortion and Framing," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-32, December.
    3. Fahad Khalil & Jacques Lawarrée & Sungho Yun, 2010. "Bribery versus extortion: allowing the lesser of two evils," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 41(1), pages 179-198, March.
    4. Rupayan Pal & Preksha Jain & Prasenjit Banerjee, 2022. "The Environment and corruption: Monetary vs. Non-monetary Incentives and the first best," Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai Working Papers 2022-011, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, India.
    5. Burlando, Alfredo & Motta, Alberto, 2016. "Legalize, tax, and deter: Optimal enforcement policies for corruptible officials," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 207-215.

    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. Ajit Mishra, 2004. "Corruption: A Review," Dundee Discussion Papers in Economics 170, Economic Studies, University of Dundee.
    2. Nicolas Jacquemet, 2005. "La corruption comme une imbrication de contrats : Une revue de la littérature microéconomique," Working Papers 2005-29, Center for Research in Economics and Statistics.
    3. Blackburn, Keith & Forgues-Puccio, Gonzalo F., 2009. "Why is corruption less harmful in some countries than in others?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(3), pages 797-810, December.
    4. Maria Kravtsova & Aleksey Oshchepkov, 2019. "Market And Network Corruption," HSE Working papers WP BRP 209/EC/2019, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    5. Brunetti, Aymo & Weder, Beatrice, 2003. "A free press is bad news for corruption," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(7-8), pages 1801-1824, August.
    6. Godin, M. & Hindriks, J., 2015. "A Review of Critical Issues on Tax Design and Tax Administration in a Global Economy and Developing Countries," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2015028, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    7. Dzhumashev, Ratbek, 2014. "Corruption and growth: The role of governance, public spending, and economic development," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 202-215.
    8. Axel Dreher & Pierre-Guillaume Méon & Friedrich Schneider, 2014. "The devil is in the shadow. Do institutions affect income and productivity or only official income and official productivity?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 158(1), pages 121-141, January.
    9. Vafai, Kouroche, 2002. "Preventing abuse of authority in hierarchies," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 20(8), pages 1143-1166, October.
    10. Rana Ejaz Ali Khan & Hafiza Maria Naeem, 2020. "Corruption, Income Inequality and Human Resource Development in Developing Economies," Asian Journal of Economic Modelling, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 8(4), pages 248-259, December.
    11. Robert Gillanders & Sinikka Parviainen, 2018. "Corruption and the shadow economy at the regional level," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(4), pages 1729-1743, November.
    12. Raul Caruso & Adelaide Baronchelli, 2013. "Economic aspects of the complementarity between corruption and crime: evidence from Italy in the period 1996-2005," International Journal of Monetary Economics and Finance, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 6(2/3), pages 244-260.
    13. Estrin, Saul & Campos, Nauro & Proto, Eugenio, 2010. "Corruption as a Barrier to Entry: Theory and Evidence," CEPR Discussion Papers 8061, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Antonio Acconcia, 2006. "Endogenous Corruption and Tax Evasion in a Dynamic Model," CSEF Working Papers 154, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy, revised 01 Nov 2006.
    15. Gauthier, Bernard & Goyette, Jonathan & Kouamé, Wilfried A.K., 2021. "Why do firms pay bribes? Evidence on the demand and supply sides of corruption in developing countries," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 190(C), pages 463-479.
    16. Tamara Fioroni & Andrea Mario Lavezzi & Giovanni Trovato, 2023. "Organized Crime, Corruption and Economic Growth," Discussion Papers 2023/298, Dipartimento di Economia e Management (DEM), University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy.
    17. Akbari, Mahsa & Bahrami-Rad, Duman & Kimbrough, Erik O., 2019. "Kinship, fractionalization and corruption," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 493-528.
    18. Cracau, Daniel & Franz, Benjamin, 2013. "Bonus payments as an anti-corruption instrument: A theoretical approach," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 120(1), pages 1-4.
    19. Aziz N. Berdiev & James W. Saunoris, 2020. "Cross‐Country Evidence Of Corruption Spillovers To Formal And Informal Entrepreneurship," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 38(1), pages 48-66, January.
    20. Ishita Chatterjee & Ranjan Ray, 2013. "The Role of Institutions in the Incidence of Crime and Corruption," Economics Discussion / Working Papers 13-17, The University of Western Australia, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • L22 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Organization and Market Structure
    • K4 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior

    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:oup:jleorg:v:25:y:2009:i:2:p:442-471. 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/jleo .

    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.