Criminal law enforcement depends on the actions of public agents such as police officers, but the resulting agency problems have been neglected in the law and economics literature (especially outside the specific context of corruption). We develop an agency model of police behavior that...

In the theory of public enforcement of law the choice of the liability rules is between strict liability and fault-based liability. In this paper, we study the determinants of compliance when in addition to standard economic incentives wrongdoers take into account stigmatization costs. In this...

This article translates and extends Becker (1968) from public law enforcement to private litigation by examining optimal legal system design in a model with private suits, signals of case strength, court error, and two types of primary behavior: harmful acts that may be deterred and benign acts...