Corruption and Optimal Law Enforcement

A. Mitchell Polinsky () and Steven Shavell ()

No 6945, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This article analyzes corruption of law enforcement agents: payment of bribes to agents so that they will not report violations. Corruption dilutes deterrence because bribe payments are less than sanctions. The state may not be able to offset this effect of bribery by raising sanctions for the underlying offense. Thus, it may be optimal to expend resources to detect and penalize corruption. At the optimum, however, corruption may not be deterred. Nonetheless, it may be desirable to attempt to control corruption in order to raise the offender's costs -- the sum of the bribe payment and the expected sanction for bribery -- and thereby increase deterrence of the underlying violation.

Date: 1999-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-mic
Note: LE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Published as Polinsky, A. Mitchell and Steven Shavell. "Corruption And Optimal Law Enforcement," Journal of Public Economics, 2001, v81(1,Jul), 1-24.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w6945.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Corruption and optimal law enforcement (2001)
Working Paper: Corruption and Optimal Law Enforcement (1999)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:6945

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w6945

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().