Even when society would wish to deter all acts of some type, such as tax evasion and many common crimes, the benefits from deterrence often will be insufficient to justify the expenditures on enforcement that would be required to deter everyone. If some individuals are not deterred, however,...

This paper considers optimal enforcement when individuals may be imperfectly informed about the probability of apprehension. When individuals are perfectly informed, optimal sanctions are maximal because, as Gary Becker (1968) suggested, society can economize on enforcement resources by reducing...

This paper explores how optimal enforcement is affected by the fact that not all individuals are equally easy to apprehend. When the probability of apprehension is the same for all individuals, optimal sanctions will be maximal: as Gary Becker (1968) suggested, raising sanctions and reducing the...