vigilante justice, as represented by peer-to-peer punishment, to delegated policing, as represented by the "hired gun" mechanism …

This paper reports the results from a laboratory experiment designed to study political distortions in the accumulation … debt associated with larger majority requirements. Also in line with the theory, we find that debt is lower when the …

observation that cartels keep participants in line through the threat of punishment, but they fail to explain two important … it is detected. We propose a theory of "equilibrium price cutting and business stealing" in cartels to bridge this gap … between theory and observation …

This article surveys the theory of the public enforcement of law -- the use of public agents (inspectors, tax auditors …, police, prosecutors) to detect and to sanction violators of legal rules. We first present the basic elements of the theory … examine a variety of extensions of the central theory, concerning accidental harms, costs of imposing fines, errors, general …