Becker's result that fines should be maximized is also applicable to some social environments where law enforcers are corrupt. If the regulated activity is legal, the principal may efficiently deter crime without an anti‐corruption unit. An opportunistic anti‐corruption unit, even when corrupt, becomes useful for the principal when the activity is illegal, since the principal's goal of maximizing fines motivates the unit to collect bribes from the enforcer, which subsequently induces the enforcer to be nearly completely honest, minimizing corruption. Therefore, we show that there is not necessarily an infinite regress originating with the puzzle of who polices the police. 相似文献
As it is known that the linkage between financial performance and environmental performance of enterprises has not obtained conclusive results, and the role of liability and its structure have not been considered yet. In view of these gaps, this paper employed the data of Chinese manufacturing firms from 2008 to 2011, to examine the impact of liability structure on enterprises’ carbon emissions abatement. The results manifest that both the relative and absolute proportions of long-term liabilities have a significant negative effect on the level value and growth rate of enterprise carbon emissions in China. Heterogeneity analysis demonstrates that enterprises in high energy consumption group have higher total carbon emissions and growth rate compared with enterprises in low and middle energy consumption groups. For enterprises of different ownership, the level of private-owned enterprises is higher and the growth rate is lower. The findings imply that policy makers should not adopt a one-size-fits-all policies to reduce firm carbon emissions.