IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/3822.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Optimal Law Enforcement with Self-Reporting of Behavior

Author

Listed:
  • Louis Kaplow
  • Steven Shavell

Abstract

Self-reporting -- the reporting by parties of their own behavior to an enforcement authority -- is a commonly observed aspect of law enforcement, as in the context of environmental and safety regulation. We add self-reporting to the model of the control of harmful externalities through probabilistic law enforcement. Optimal self-reporting schemes are characterized and are shown to offer two advantages over schemes without self-reporting: enforcement resources are saved because individuals who are led to report harmful acts need not be identified; risk is reduced because individuals bear certain sanctions when they report their behavior, rather than face uncertain sanctions.

Suggested Citation

  • Louis Kaplow & Steven Shavell, 1991. "Optimal Law Enforcement with Self-Reporting of Behavior," NBER Working Papers 3822, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:3822
    Note: LE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w3822.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gary S. Becker, 1974. "Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach," NBER Chapters, in: Essays in the Economics of Crime and Punishment, pages 1-54, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Kim C. Border & Joel Sobel, 1987. "Samurai Accountant: A Theory of Auditing and Plunder," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 54(4), pages 525-540.
    3. Dilip Mookherjee & Ivan Png, 1989. "Optimal Auditing, Insurance, and Redistribution," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 104(2), pages 399-415.
    4. Reinganum, Jennifer F. & Wilde, Louis L., 1985. "Income tax compliance in a principal-agent framework," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 1-18, February.
    5. David P. Baron & David Besanko, 1984. "Regulation, Asymmetric Information, and Auditing," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(4), pages 447-470, Winter.
    6. George J. Stigler, 1974. "The Optimum Enforcement of Laws," NBER Chapters, in: Essays in the Economics of Crime and Punishment, pages 55-67, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Louis Kaplow, 1992. "A Model of the Optimal Complexity of Rules," NBER Working Papers 3958, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Scotchmer, Suzanne, 1987. "Audit Classes and Tax Enforcement Policy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(2), pages 229-233, May.
    9. Baiman, S & Demski, Js, 1980. "Economically Optimal Performance Evaluation And Control-Systems," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18, pages 184-220.
    10. Mookherjee, Dilip & Png, I P L, 1990. "Enforcement Costs and the Optimal Progressivity of Income Taxes," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 6(2), pages 410-431, Fall.
    11. Ronald A. Dye, 1986. "Optimal Monitoring Policies in Agencies," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 17(3), pages 339-350, Autumn.
    12. Townsend, Robert M., 1979. "Optimal contracts and competitive markets with costly state verification," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 265-293, October.
    13. Polinsky, Mitchell & Shavell, Steven, 1979. "The Optimal Tradeoff between the Probability and Magnitude of Fines," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(5), pages 880-891, December.
    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. Jean-Jacques Laffont, 2003. "Enforcement, Regulation and Development," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE), vol. 12(Supplemen), pages 193-211, September.
    2. Jeffrey M. Lacker, 1989. "Limited commitment and costly enforcement," Working Paper 90-02, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    3. repec:dau:papers:123456789/6456 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. repec:dau:papers:123456789/6457 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. M. Martin Boyer, 2007. "Resistance (to Fraud) Is Futile," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 74(2), pages 461-492, June.
    6. Marcel Boyer & Tracy R. Lewis & Wei Lin Liu, 2000. "Setting standards for credible compliance and law enforcement," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 33(2), pages 319-340, May.
    7. Thierry Pénard & Saïd Souam, 2002. "Collusion et politique de la concurrence en information asymétrique," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 66, pages 209-233.
    8. Cowen, Tyler & Glazer, Amihai, 1996. "More monitoring can induce less effort," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 113-123, July.
    9. Bose, Pinaki, 1995. "Anticipatory compliance and effective regulatory activity," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 151-159, June.
    10. Eduardo Engel & James R. Hines Jr., 1998. "Understanding Tax Evasion Dynamics," Documentos de Trabajo 47, Centro de Economía Aplicada, Universidad de Chile.
    11. Spaeter, Sandrine & Verchère, Alban, 2004. "Aléa moral et politiques d’audit optimales dans le cadre de la pollution d’origine agricole de l’eau," Cahiers d'Economie et de Sociologie Rurales (CESR), Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), vol. 71.
    12. Glazer, Amihai & Hassin, Refael, 1998. "Governmental Failures in Evaluating Programs," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 94(1-2), pages 105-115, January.
    13. Boyer, Martin, 2001. "Les clauses de valeur à neuf sont-elles optimales?," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 77(1), pages 53-74, mars.
    14. Kishore Gawande & Alok K. Bohara, 2005. "Agency Problems in Law Enforcement: Theory and Application to the U.S. Coast Guard," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 51(11), pages 1593-1609, November.
    15. Jordi Caballé & Judith Panadés, 2005. "Cost Uncertainty and Taxpayer Compliance," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 12(3), pages 239-263, May.
    16. Sinclair-Desgagne, Bernard & Gabel, H. Landis, 1997. "Environmental Auditing in Management Systems and Public Policy," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 33(3), pages 331-346, July.
    17. Bayer, Ralph-C., 2006. "A contest with the taxman - the impact of tax rates on tax evasion and wastefully invested resources," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(5), pages 1071-1104, July.
    18. Ravikumar, B. & Zhang, Yuzhe, 2010. "Optimal Auditing in a Dynamic Model of Tax Compliance," MPRA Paper 23218, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Bénédicte Coestier & Nathalie Fombaron, 2003. "L'audit en assurance," THEMA Working Papers 2003-41, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    20. Nicolas Boccard & Patrick Legros, 2017. "Audit Competition in Insurance Oligopolies," Frontiers of Economics in China-Selected Publications from Chinese Universities, Higher Education Press, vol. 12(3), pages 371-399, September.
    21. Pierre Picard, 2012. "Economic Analysis of Insurance Fraud," Working Papers hal-00725561, HAL.
    22. Ralph-C Bayer, 2003. "Income Tax Evasion with Morally Constraint Taxpayers: The Role of Evasion Opportunities and Evasion Cost," School of Economics and Public Policy Working Papers 2003-04, University of Adelaide, School of Economics and Public Policy.

    More about this item

    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:nbr:nberwo:3822. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.