Setting Standards for Credible Compliance and Law Enforcement

Marcel Boyer, Tracy Lewis and Wei Lin Liu

CIRANO Working Papers from CIRANO

Abstract: This paper examines the setting of optimal legal standards to simultaneously induce parties to invest in care and to motivate law enforcers to detect violators of the law. The strategic interaction between care providers and law enforcers determines the degree of efficiency achieved by the standards. Our principal finding is that some divergence between the marginal benefits and marginal costs of providing care is required to control enforcement costs. Further, the setting of standards may effectively substitute for the setting of fines when penalties for violation are fixed. In particular, maximal fines may be welfare reducing when standards are set optimally. Nous considérons dans cet article la détermination, en information incomplète, de normes légales optimales pour à la fois inciter les citoyens à faire preuve de diligence (prévention) et motiver les agents de la paix à veiller au respect des lois. L'interaction stratégique entre citoyens et agents de la paix détermine l'efficacité des normes choisies. Notre résultat principal est à l'effet qu'un écart entre bénéfices marginaux et coûts marginaux de la diligence est nécessaire afin de réduire les coûts d'application des lois. De plus, les normes peuvent être un substitut aux amendes lorsque les pénalités pour infraction sont fixes. Des amendes maximales peuvent en particulier être contre-indiquées lorsque les normes sont optimalement déterminées.

Keywords: Law Enforcement; Legal Standards; Fines; Strategic Behavior; Normes légales; amendes; respect des lois; comportement stratégique (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D82 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1996-10-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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https://cirano.qc.ca/files/publications/96s-27.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Setting standards for credible compliance and law enforcement (2000)
Journal Article: Setting standards for credible compliance and law enforcement (2000)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cir:cirwor:96s-27

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