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Ambiguity and enforcement

Evan Calford and Gregory DeAngelo ()
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Gregory DeAngelo: Claremont Graduate University

Experimental Economics, 2023, vol. 26, issue 2, No 4, 304-338

Abstract: Abstract Law enforcement officials face numerous decisions regarding their enforcement choices. One important decision, that is often controversial, is the amount of knowledge that law enforcement distributes to the community regarding their policing strategies. Assuming the goal is to minimize criminal activity (alternatively, maximize citation rates), our theoretical analysis suggests that agencies should reveal (shroud) their resource allocation if criminals are uncertainty seeking, and shroud (reveal) their allocation if criminals are uncertainty averse. We run a laboratory experiment to test our theoretical framework, and find that enforcement behavior is approximately optimal given the observed non-expected utility uncertainty preferences of criminals.

Keywords: Law enforcement; Strategic uncertainty; Experimental economics; Ambiguity aversion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D81 D82 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10683-022-09755-w

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