IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jothpo/v16y2004i4p403-421.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Penalty and Crime with Lumpy Choices

Author

Listed:
  • Laurent Franckx

    (Royal Military Academy of Belgium, Brussels, Laurent.Franckx@rma.ac.be)

Abstract

This paper clarifies an issue in the Hirshleifer and Rasmusen-Tsebelis controversy on the effects of penalties on crime: what is the effect of penalties if the transgression of law has a discrete nature and if the law enforcer cannot act as Stackelberg leader? We differentiate between technical (compliance costs) and institutional (penalties) parameters in the potential transgressor’s payoff’s functions. Depending on the penalty structure, we obtain equilibria either in pure or in mixed strategies. We confirm that the role played by penalties in mixed strategy equilibria is fundamentally different from the role they play in pure strategies. We also identify sufficient conditions for the implementability and uniqueness of given equilibria when there are restrictions on the penalties and/or on the incentive schemes for the law enforcers. Finally, we give a rationalization for the use of mixed strategies as a solution concept in law enforcement games.

Suggested Citation

  • Laurent Franckx, 2004. "Penalty and Crime with Lumpy Choices," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 16(4), pages 403-421, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jothpo:v:16:y:2004:i:4:p:403-421
    DOI: 10.1177/0951629804046148
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0951629804046148
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0951629804046148?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access 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. Franz Weissing & Elinor Ostrom, 1991. "Crime and Punishment: Further Reflections on the Counterintuitive Results of Mixed Equilibria Games," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 3(3), pages 343-350, July.
    3. Mookherjee, Dilip & Png, I P L, 1992. "Monitoring vis-a-vis Investigation in Enforcement of Law," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 556-565, June.
    4. Holler, Manfred J, 1993. "Fighting Pollution When Decisions Are Strategic," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 76(4), pages 347-356, August.
    5. George Tsebelis, 1990. "Penalty has no Impact on Crime:," Rationality and Society, , vol. 2(3), pages 255-286, July.
    6. Friedman, David & Sjostrom, William, 1993. "Hanged for a Sheep--The Economics of Marginal Deterrence," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 22(2), pages 345-366, June.
    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. Gianfranco Gambarelli & Daniele Gervasio & Francesca Maggioni & Daniel Faccini, 2022. "A Stackelberg game for the Italian tax evasion problem," Computational Management Science, Springer, vol. 19(2), pages 295-307, June.
    2. Rosario Crino & Giovanni Immordino & Gülen Karakoç-Palminteri & Salvatore Piccolo, 2018. "Fighting Mobile Crime," CSEF Working Papers 504, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    3. Crinò, Rosario & Immordino, Giovanni & Piccolo, Salvatore, 2019. "Marginal deterrence at work," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 586-612.
    4. Rimawan Pradiptyo, 2015. "A Certain Uncertainty; Assessment of Court Decisions in Tackling Corruption in Indonesia," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: R N Ghosh & M A B Siddique (ed.), CORRUPTION, GOOD GOVERNANCE and ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT Contemporary Analysis and Case Studies, chapter 10, pages 167-215, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    5. Steven Shavell, 2003. "Economic Analysis of Public Law Enforcement and Criminal Law," NBER Working Papers 9698, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Leshem Shmuel & Tabbach Avraham D., 2012. "Commitment versus Flexibility in Enforcement Games," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-42, May.
    7. Laurent Franckx, 2004. "Marginal Deterrence Through Ambient Environmental Inspections," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 51(4), pages 507-527, September.
    8. Antonio Acconcia & Marcello D'Amato & Riccardo Martina, 2003. "Corruption and Tax Evasion with Competitive Bribes," CSEF Working Papers 112, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    9. Jack Hirshleifer & Eric Rasmusen, 1992. "Are Equilibrium Strategies Unaffected by Incentives?," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 4(3), pages 353-367, July.
    10. Marjit, Sugata & Mukherjee, Vivekananda & Mukherjee, Arijit, 2000. "Harassment, corruption and tax policy," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 75-94, March.
    11. Keith Blackburn & Kyriakos C. Neanidis & Maria Paola Rana, 2015. "Organized Crime, Corruption and Growth: Theory and Evidence," Centre for Growth and Business Cycle Research Discussion Paper Series 210, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    12. Helsley, Robert W. & Strange, William C., 1999. "Gated Communities and the Economic Geography of Crime," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 80-105, July.
    13. 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.
    14. Dahm, Matthias & González, Paula & Porteiro, Nicolás, 2018. "The enforcement of mandatory disclosure rules," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 167(C), pages 21-32.
    15. Kugler, Maurice & Verdier, Thierry & Zenou, Yves, 2005. "Organized crime, corruption and punishment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(9-10), pages 1639-1663, September.
    16. Matteo Rizzolli, 2016. "Adjudication: Type-I and Type-II Errors," CERBE Working Papers wpC15, CERBE Center for Relationship Banking and Economics.
    17. Rafael Di Tella & Ernesto Schargrodsky, 2004. "Do Police Reduce Crime? Estimates Using the Allocation of Police Forces After a Terrorist Attack," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 115-133, March.
    18. Roger Waldeck, 2016. "Modeling criminality: the impact of emotions, norms and interaction structures," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 135-160, June.
    19. Ben-Shahar, Omri, 1997. "Playing without a rulebook: Optimal enforcement when individuals learn the penalty only by committing the crime," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 409-421, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    economic analysis of law enforcement;

    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:sae:jothpo:v:16:y:2004:i:4:p:403-421. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.