Law Enforcement and Corrections Commons^™

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 …