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Reversible Rewards, Omri Ben-Shahar, Anu Bradford
Reversible Rewards, Omri Ben-Shahar, Anu Bradford
Faculty Scholarship
This article offers a new mechanism of private enforcement, combining sanctions and rewards into a scheme of “reversible rewards.” The enforcing party sets up a precommitted fund and offers it as reward to another party to refrain from violation. If the violator turns down the reward, the enforcer can use the money in the fund for one purpose only – to pay for punishment of the violator. The article shows that this scheme doubles the effect of funds invested in enforcement and allows the enforcer to stop violations that would otherwise be too costly to deter. It argues that reversible …
Law Enforcement Under Incomplete Law: Theory And Evidence From Financial Market Regulation, Chenggang Xu, Katharina Pistor
Law Enforcement Under Incomplete Law: Theory And Evidence From Financial Market Regulation, Chenggang Xu, Katharina Pistor
Faculty Scholarship
This paper studies the design of law-making and law enforcement institutions based on the premise that law is inherently incomplete. Under incomplete law, law enforcement by courts may suffer from deterrence failure, defined as the social-welfare loss that results from the regime's inability to deter harmful actions. As a potential remedy a regulatory regime is introduced. The major functional difference between courts and regulators is that courts enforce law reactively, that is only once others have initiated law enforcement procedures, while regulators enforce law proactively, i.e. on their own initiative. Proactive law enforcement may be superior in preventing harm. However, …