We analyze whether corporate leniency programs should grant full immunity to the first self-reporting firm regardless of the amount of evidence provided. We distinguish between two firms, one of them providing high and one only low evidence. We show that awarding full amnesty also to the low...

Witnesses often gain by slanting testimony. Courts try to elicit the truth with perjury rules. Perjury is not truth-revealing; truth revelation is, however, possible. With a truth-revealing mechanism the judge will get little testimony because the defendant will not present witnesses with...

In trials witnesses often slant their testimony in order to advance their own interests. To obtain truthful testimony, the law relies on cross-examination under threat of prosecution for perjury. We show that perjury law is an imperfect truthrevealing mechanism. Moreover, we develop a...

We model the Catholic Church as a heterogeneous club managed by a specialized agency that pursues the enlargement of the club within given constraints. Religious indulgences induce the self selection of members, based on their attitudes towards risk. Highly risk-averse members do not relax their...

We consider a model of optimal law enforcement according to which self-reporting may be considered in mitigation. After committing a crime, individuals get a private update of their probability of apprehension. Hence, self-enforcing has an option value of self-reporting, since criminals can...

This paper shows that investors may want fund managers to acquire and trade on short-term instead of more profitable long-term information. This improves learning about managerial ability from performance observations, for two reasons. Firstly, short-term information is of higher quality, which...

This paper presents a theoretical model in which governments regulate economic activity and individuals bypass the regulations by paying bribes to the public officials who monitor their businesses; the amount of the bribe is the subject of bargaining. The paper then introduces a policy that...

Escalating penalties for repeat offenders are a pervasive feature of punishment schemes in various contexts, but economic theory has had a hard time rationalizing the practice. This paper reviews the literature on escalating penalties, and then develops a theory based on uncertainty on the part...

How do we make sense of the cross-country heterogeneity in value judgments emerging from international surveys? Our study suggests that the answer needs to go beyond the adaptation of values to existing institutions and should tap into deeper beliefs. In our case, Finnish respondents do support...

This paper presents a model of quantity regulation as a policy variable when regulation enforcement is imperfect. The model provides a counterintuitive result: that equilibrium congestion can become worse as the quantity restriction becomes more severe. Intuitively, stricter regulation makes the...