Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Law
Deterrence Theory: Key Findings And Challenges, Alex Raskolnikov
Deterrence Theory: Key Findings And Challenges, Alex Raskolnikov
Faculty Scholarship
This chapter reviews the key findings of the optimal deterrence theory and discusses the remaining challenges. Some of these challenges reflect current modeling choices and limitations. These include the treatment of the offender’s gains in the social welfare function; the design of the damages multiplier in a realistic, multi-period framework; the effects of different types of uncertainty on behavior; and the study of optional, imperfectly enforced, threshold-based regimes – that is, regimes that reflect the most common real-world regulatory setting. Other challenges arise because several key regulatory features and enforcement outcomes are inconsistent with the deterrence theory’s predictions and prescriptions. …
Unexpected Effects Of Expected Sanctions, Giuseppe Dari‐Mattiacci, Alex Raskolnikov
Unexpected Effects Of Expected Sanctions, Giuseppe Dari‐Mattiacci, Alex Raskolnikov
Faculty Scholarship
The economic analysis of law enforcement holds that greater expected sanctions lead to greater compliance. The literature on positive and negative incentives holds that rewards and sanctions – or carrots and sticks – have identical first-order incentive effects. We extend the basic model of law enforcement in three ways. We allow agents to opt out of the regulatory regime, we allow for enforcement errors, and we model agents who vary in at least one trait in addition to their cost of compliance. We show that following these three realistic modifications of the basic model, the two fundamental conclusions just described …