A broad array of law enforcement strategies, from income tax to bank regulation, involve self-reporting by regulated agents and auditing of some fraction of the reports by the regulating bureau. Standard models of self-reporting strategies assume that although bureaus only have estimates of the...

A regulator, seeking to maximize net benefits, must choose between rules and standards and then set a level of care. The regulated agents have private information about their compliance costs. Rules are set ex ante, so agents know the required level of care. Standards are established after...

The audit policy of a tax authority can signal its audit effectiveness. We model this process and show that in limited circumstances an ineffective authority can masquerade as being effective. We show that high maximal penalties imply underreporting of income.

We study the problem of allocating multiple items to two agents whose cardinal preferences are private information. If money is available, Bayesian incentive compatibility and ex-ante Pareto efficiency can be achieved using the Expected Externality Mechanism (EEM). Absent money, under certain...

A broad array of law enforcement strategies, from income tax to bank regulation, involve self-reporting by regulated agents and auditing of some fraction of the reports by the regulating bureau. Standard models of self-reporting strategies assume that although bureaus only have estimates of the...

The audit policy of a tax authority can signal its audit effectiveness. We model this process and show that in limited circumstances an ineffective authority can masquerade as being effective. We show that high maximal penalties imply underreporting of income