enforcers - on sequential, bilateral, illegal transactions, such as corruption, manager-auditor collusion, or drug deals. It is …We study the consequences of leniency - reduced legal sanctions for wrongdoers who spontaneously self-report to law …

Economic theory suggests that the deterrence of deviant behavior is driven by a combination of severity and certainty … of punishment. This paper presents the first controlled experiment to study a third important factor that has been mainly … overlooked: the swiftness of formal sanctions. We consider two dimensions: the timing at which the uncertainty about whether one …

attempts to increase the severity of punishment will alter the payoff of the individuals involved, leaving unchanged the … the certainty of punishment and the ability of the government to enforce it. …