 The Theory of Public Enforcement of LawA. Mitchell Polinsky () and Steven Shavell Chapter 06 in Handbook of Law and Economics, 2007, vol. 1, pp 403-454 from Elsevier Abstract: This chapter surveys the theory of the public enforcement of law--the use of governmental agents (regulators, inspectors, tax auditors, police, prosecutors) to detect and to sanction violators of legal rules. The theoretical core of the analysis addresses the following basic questions: Should the form of the sanction imposed on a liable party be a fine, an imprisonment term, or a combination of the two? Should the rule of liability be strict or fault-based? If violators are caught only with a probability, how should the level of the sanction be adjusted? How much of society's resources should be devoted to apprehending violators? A variety of extensions of the central theory are then examined, including: activity level; errors; the costs of imposing fines; general enforcement; marginal deterrence; the principal-agent relationship; settlements; self-reporting; repeat offenders; imperfect knowledge about the probability and magnitude of sanctions; corruption; incapacitation; costly observation of wealth; social norms; and the fairness of sanctions. Keywords: public enforcement of law; fines; imprisonment; strict liability; fault-based liability; probability of detection; errors; general enforcement; marginal deterrence; settlements; self-reporting; repeat offenders; fairness of sanctions; norms (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:lawchp:1-06 Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Handbook of Law and Economics from Elsevier |
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