Harassment bribes - payments people give in order not to be denied what they are legally entitled to - are common in for example India. Kaushik Basu recently made a 'radical' proposal to reduce its occurrence: Legalize the act of giving the bribe and double the fine for accepting the bribe! We...

We consider a model of optimal law enforcement where sanctions can be reduced for self-reporting individuals. The literature is extended in two directions: First, we distinguish between two self-reporting stages: a first one before the case is investigated, and a second one where the criminal is...

We investigate the effects of an institutional mechanism that incentivizes taxpayers to blow the whistle on collusive corruption and tax compliance. We explore this through a formal leniency program. In our experiment, we nest collusive corruption within a tax evasion framework. We not only...

We investigate the effects of an institutional mechanism that incentivizes taxpayers to blow the whistle on collusive corruption and tax compliance. We explore this through a formal leniency program. In our experiment, we nest collusive corruption within a tax evasion framework. We not only...

In many societies, the power to punish is granted to a centralized authority. While the punishment of free-riders has been shown to play an important role in the provision of public goods, corruption might strongly disrupt the ability of a centralized authority to foster cooperation. In this...

This article has been significantly revised. Please refer to the revised version, titled “Allocating Regulatory Resources”, which is available on SSRN at: 'http://ssrn.com/abstract=2304434' http://ssrn.com/abstract=2304434.This article incorporates the concept of legal placebo effects into...

Research in criminology has shown that the perceived risk of apprehension often differs substantially from the true level. To account for this insight, we extend the standard economic model of law enforcement (Becker, 1968) by considering two types of offenders, sophisticates and naïves. The...

In major legal orders such as UK, the U.S., Germany, and France, bribers and recipients face equally severe criminal sanctions. In contrast, countries like China, Russia, and Japan treat the briber more mildly. Given these differences between symmetric and asymmetric punishment regimes for...

Research in criminology has shown that the perceived risk of apprehension often differs substantially from the true level. To account for this insight, we extend the standard economic model of law enforcement (Becker, 1968) by considering two types of offenders, sophisticates and naïves. The...