Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-2013

Publication Title

Review of Law & Economics

Publication Title (Abbreviation)

Rev. L. & Econ.

Volume

9

Issue

3

First Page

303

Last Page

339

Abstract

Law enforcers frequently issue warnings, as opposed to sanctions, when they detect first-time offenders. However, virtually all of the law and economics literature dealing with optimal penalty schemes for repeat offenders suggest that issuing warnings is a sub-optimal practice. Another observed phenomenon is the joint use of warnings and sanctions in law enforcement: person A may receive a sanction, whereas person B is only warned for committing the same offense. This situation can be explained through the use of hybrid warning strategies, a concept not yet formalized in the law enforcement literature, where law enforcers issue warnings to x% sanctions to (100-x)% of first-time offenders. This article uses a two-period optimal deterrence model to provide a rationale as to why it may be optimal to issue warnings. When uninformed individuals are present and their punishment is assumed to be costly, there is a trade-off between such costs and reduced levels of deterrence. Depending on the cost structure associated with the punishment of uninformed individuals, warning strategies, including hybrid ones, may be optimal. A secondary contribution of this article is to point out that lack of information concerning laws may lead to optimal escalating punishments for repeat offenders.

DOI

http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/rle-2012-0010

Rights

© 2013 Review of Law & Economics

Comments

First published in Review of Law & Economics.

Faculty Biography

http://law.fsu.edu/our-faculty/profiles/mungan

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