IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ube/dpvwib/dp0211.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Subgame Perfect Punishment for Repeat Offenders

Author

Listed:
  • Winand Emons

Abstract

First we show that for wealth-constrained agents who may commit an act twice the optimal sanctions are the offender's entire wealth for the first and zero for the second crime. Then we ask the question whether this decreasing sanction scheme is subgame perfect (time consistent), i.e., does a rent-seeking government stick to this sanction scheme after the first crime has occurred. If the benefit and/or the harm from the crime are not too large, this is indeed the case; otherwise, equal sanctions for both crimes are optimal.

Suggested Citation

  • Winand Emons, 2002. "Subgame Perfect Punishment for Repeat Offenders," Diskussionsschriften dp0211, Universitaet Bern, Departement Volkswirtschaft.
    • Handle: RePEc:ube:dpvwib:dp0211
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.vwiit.ch/dp/dp0211.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. Boadway, Robin & Keen, Michael, 1998. "Evasion and Time Consistency in the Taxation of Capital Income," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 39(2), pages 461-476, May.
    3. Polinsky, A. Mitchell & Shavell, Steven, 1998. "On offense history and the theory of deterrence," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 305-324, September.
    4. Burnovski, Moshe & Safra, Zvi, 1994. "Deterrence effects of sequential punishment policies: Should repeat offenders be more severely punished?," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 341-350, September.
    5. Nuno Garoupa & Daniel Klerman, 2002. "Optimal Law Enforcement with a Rent-Seeking Government," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 4(1), pages 116-140, January.
    6. Landsberger, Michael & Meilijson, Isaac, 1982. "Incentive generating state dependent penalty system : The case of income tax evasion," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 333-352, December.
    7. Steven Shavell & A. Mitchell Polinsky, 2000. "The Economic Theory of Public Enforcement of Law," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 38(1), pages 45-76, March.
    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. Emons, Winand, 2007. "Escalating penalties for repeat offenders," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 170-178.
    2. Thomas J. Miceli, 2009. "Deterrence and Incapacitation Models of Criminal Punishment: Can the Twain Meet?," Working papers 2009-25, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    3. Leandro Arozamena & Martin Besfamille & Pablo Sanguinetti, 2010. "Optimal taxes and penalties when the government cannot commit to its audit policy," Department of Economics Working Papers 2010-10, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella.
    4. Matthew Baker & Thomas Miceli, 2005. "Credible Criminal Enforcement," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 20(1), pages 5-15, July.
    5. Tim Friehe, 2009. "Escalating penalties for repeat offenders: a note on the role of information," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 97(2), pages 165-183, June.
    6. Mungan, Murat C., 2010. "Repeat offenders: If they learn, we punish them more severely," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 173-177, June.
    7. Lisa R. Anderson & Gregory DeAngelo & Winand Emons & Beth Freeborn & Hannes Lang, 2017. "Penalty Structures And Deterrence In A Two-Stage Model: Experimental Evidence," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(4), pages 1833-1867, October.
    8. Loss, Frederic & Malavolti-Grimal, Estelle & Verge, Thibaud & Berges-Sennou, Fabian, 2008. "European competition policy modernization: From notifications to legal exception," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 52(1), pages 77-98, January.
    9. Wolfgang Eggert & Steffen Minter & Maximilian Stephan & Handirk Ungern-Sternberg, 2017. "Sanctions for repeat offenders: a question of wealth?," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 64(5), pages 467-482, November.
    10. Roger Bowles & Chrisostomos Florackis, 2012. "Impatience, reputation and offending," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(2), pages 177-187, January.
    11. Miceli Thomas J. & Bucci Catherine, 2005. "A Simple Theory of Increasing Penalties for Repeat Offenders," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 1(1), pages 71-80, April.
    12. Rousseau, Sandra, 2009. "The use of warnings in the presence of errors," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(3), pages 191-201, September.
    13. Isabel Strecker, 2024. "Gambling bank behaviour, incentive mechanism, and sanctions: A two-stage model," Journal of Banking Regulation, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 25(2), pages 197-208, June.
    14. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:11:y:2005:i:2:p:1-7 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Miceli Thomas J., 2012. "Deterred or Detained? A Unified Model of Criminal Punishment," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 8(1), pages 1-20, March.
    16. Mungan Murat C., 2013. "Optimal Warning Strategies: Punishment Ought Not to Be Inflicted Where the Penal Provision Is Not Properly Conveyed," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 9(3), pages 303-339, November.
    17. Stan Miles & Derek Pyne, 2015. "Deterring repeat offenders with escalating penalty schedules: a Bayesian approach," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 16(3), pages 229-250, August.

    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. Lisa R. Anderson & Gregory DeAngelo & Winand Emons & Beth Freeborn & Hannes Lang, 2017. "Penalty Structures And Deterrence In A Two-Stage Model: Experimental Evidence," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(4), pages 1833-1867, October.
    2. Emons, Winand, 2007. "Escalating penalties for repeat offenders," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 170-178.
    3. Emons, Winand, 2003. "A note on the optimal punishment for repeat offenders," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 253-259, September.
    4. Mungan, Murat C., 2010. "Repeat offenders: If they learn, we punish them more severely," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 173-177, June.
    5. Nuno Garoupa, 2004. "Dynamic Law Enforcement with Learning," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 20(1), pages 192-206, April.
    6. Mungan Murat C., 2013. "Optimal Warning Strategies: Punishment Ought Not to Be Inflicted Where the Penal Provision Is Not Properly Conveyed," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 9(3), pages 303-339, November.
    7. Yahagi, Ken, 2021. "Law enforcement with motivated agents," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    8. Suurmond, Guido, 2007. "The effects of the enforcement strategy," MPRA Paper 21142, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Pradiptyo, Rimawan, 2012. "Does Corruption Pay in Indonesia? If So, Who are Benefited the Most?," MPRA Paper 41384, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Thomas J. Miceli & Kathleen Segerson & Dietrich Earnhart, 2022. "The role of experience in deterring crime: A theory of specific versus general deterrence," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 60(4), pages 1833-1853, October.
    11. Miceli Thomas J. & Bucci Catherine, 2005. "A Simple Theory of Increasing Penalties for Repeat Offenders," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 1(1), pages 71-80, April.
    12. Evgenia Motchenkova, 2014. "Cost minimizing sequential punishment policies for repeat offenders," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(5), pages 360-365, March.
    13. Wolfgang Eggert & Steffen Minter & Maximilian Stephan & Handirk Ungern-Sternberg, 2017. "Sanctions for repeat offenders: a question of wealth?," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 64(5), pages 467-482, November.
    14. Éric Langlais & Marie Obidzinski, 2013. "Elected vs appointed public law enforcers," EconomiX Working Papers 2013-35, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    15. Rouillon, Sébastien, 2010. "Optimal law enforcement with costly public funds," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 345-348, December.
    16. Éric Langlais & Marie Obidzinski, 2015. "Public law enforcers and political competition," EconomiX Working Papers 2015-40, University of Paris Nanterre, EconomiX.
    17. Derek Johnson & Thomas J. Miceli, 2013. "Asset Forfeiture Laws and Criminal Deterrence," Working papers 2013-27, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    18. Thomas J. Miceli, 2012. "Escalating Interest in Escalating Penalties," Working papers 2012-08, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    19. Zhiyong (John) Liu & Zhewei Wang & Zhendong Yin, 2022. "When is duplication of effort a good thing in law enforcement?," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 24(4), pages 682-708, August.
    20. Saori Chiba & Kaiwen Leong, 2016. "Behavioral Economics of Crime Rates and Punishment Levels," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 172(4), pages 727-754, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    crime and punishment; repeat offenders; subgame perfection;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • K41 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Litigation Process
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ube:dpvwib:dp0211. 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: Franz Koelliker (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vwibech.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.