Although legal sanctions are often non-deterrent, we frequently observe compliance with ‘mild laws'. A possible explanation is that the incentives to comply are shaped not only by legal, but also by social sanctions. This paper employs a novel experimental approach to study the link between...

Immigration control-related audits and their resulting sanctions are not solely determined by impartial enforcement of laws and regulations. They are also determined by the incentives faced by vote-maximizing congressmen, agents acting on their behalf, and workers likely to compete with...

This paper shows that increases in the minimum wage rate can have ambiguous effects on the working hours and welfare of employed workers in competitive labor markets. The reason is that employers may not comply with the minimum wage legislation and instead pay a lower subminimum wage rate. If...

We study compliance dynamics generated by a large set of behavioral rules describing social interaction in a population of agents facing an enforcement authority. When the authority adjusts the auditing probability every period, cycling in cheating-auditing occurs: Intensive monitoring induces...

This paper argues that the “Economics of Crime” concentrates too much on punishment as a policy to fight crime, which is unwise for several reasons. There are important instances in which punishment simply cannot reduce crime. Several feasible alternatives to punishment exist, such as...

When enacting labor market regulation governments face courts that interpret and implement the legal code. We show that the incentives for governments for labor market reform increase with the uncertainty that is involved in the implementation of legal codes through courts. Given that judges...

Research in criminology has shown that the perceived risk of apprehension often differs substantially from the true level. To account for this insight, we extend the standard economic model of law enforcement (Becker, 1968) by considering two types of offenders, sophisticates and naïves. The...

Criminal law enforcement depends on the actions of public agents such as police officers, but the resulting agency problems have been neglected in the law and economics literature (especially outside the specific context of corruption). We develop an agency model of police behavior that...

In this paper, I empirically investigate the presence of spillover effects resulting from the strengthening of law enforcement against corruption and organized crime in local governments. Specifically, I take advantage of an Italian law that gives power to the central government to replace...

This paper offers a new argument for why a more aggressive enforcement of minor offenses ('zero-tolerance') may yield a double dividend in that it reduces both minor offenses and more severe crime. We develop a model of criminal subcultures in which people gain social status among their peers...