Frequent probabilistic punishment in law enforcement

Timing and frequency of punishment are critical elements in law enforcement. Previous studies suggest the superiority of immediate punishment schemes over delayed punishment, as well as the importance of frequent punishment. Yet law enforcement schemes which utilize both frequent and immediate punishment are often cost prohibitive. In this work, we propose the “bad lottery immediate punishment” as an effective substitute to immediate punishment. This is a punishment mechanism that signals immediately to an offender that his violation has been spotted, but the actual penalty is delayed and probabilistic. We discuss implications in law enforcement, where probabilistic punishment is potentially more cost effective. Received: May 2000 / Acccepted: December 2000     

注册会计师行业“诚信危机”的成因及防范对策研究

会计师事务所在委托人与被审计人合一的制度安排中,在违规成本太低、处罚不当的诱致下,为获得自身利益最大化,不惜牺牲诚实信用原则,给委托人出具虚假会计鉴定报告,极大地降低了会计师事务所的社会公信力。本文认为,应通过加大会计师事务所的民事责任追究力度、建立委托人与被审计人分离的制度安排、加强对有限责任制事务所的经济约束等措施加以防范。     

How municipalities react to budgetary windfalls

Using a panel of 308 observations over the period 1989–1996, we analyse how Flemish municipalities react to budgetary shocks. We address two questions: whether governments respond differently to tax than to grant windfalls and whether responses to positive and negative shocks are symmetric. Our results confirm the recent findings on U.S. local governments that reveal asymmetric responses to positive and negative windfalls. We also find evidence of different responsiveness to tax and grant windfalls. Received: November 2000 / Accepted: September 2001 RID="*" ID="*" We thank Roger H. Gordon, Stanley Winer and participants of the 1998 EEA meeting in Berlin where a previous version of this paper was presented for stimulating comments.     

On the negative social value of central banks' knowledge transparency

We examine to what extent central banks should release their internal assessments concerning the links between money growth and future inflation, and between employment and inflation. We show that the social value of knowledge transparency concerning real shocks is negative since the disclosure of the central bank's private information eliminates the possibility of insuring the public against those shocks. Finally, we discuss a number of further arguments which have to be taken into account before policy conclusions can be drawn. First version: August 1998 / Final version: July 2002 RID="*" ID="*" I would like to thank Charles Goodhart, Gerhard Illing, Eva Terberger-Stoy, Volker Hahn, Carl E. Walsh, seminar participants in Frankfurt and Heidelberg and at the annual meeting of the German Economic Association 2000 for helpful comments.     

Lobbying contests with alternative instruments

This is a model of a contest where, in order to win, each opponent can use two instruments. The probabilities of winning are explored, as well as the expenditures of the interest groups, and the relative rent-dissipation in both cases where the players have the option to use only one instrument (the standard Tullock contest) and where the players have the option to use two instruments in the contest. We show that the use of two instruments strengthens the player with the higher stake, decreases the relative rent dissipation and it decreases total expenditure if the parties are sufficiently asymmetric. Received: February 23, 2001 / Accepted: March 25, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" We are grateful to two anonymous referees and the editor Kai Konrad, for constructive comments.     

Deterrence versus intrinsic motivation: Experimental evidence on the determinants of corruptibility

This paper reports on an experiment of corruption that was conducted in two treatments: one with the possibility of detection and one without. It turns out that monitoring reduces corruption through deterrence; at the same time, it destroys the intrinsic motivation for honesty. Thus the net effect on overall corruption is a priori undetermined. We show that the salary level has an influence on corruption through increased opportunity costs of corruption, but fail to find evidence for a ‘payment satisfaction’ effect. Interesting policy conclusions emerge. RID="*" ID="*" Acknowledgments: We are indebted to Johann Graf Lambsdorff for calling our attention to Fujimori's gender policy and to Ernst Fehr, Bruno Frey, Alireza Jay Naghavi, and two anonymous referees for valuable comments.     

Pre-assigned rents and bureaucratic friction

In this paper we study the endogenous determination of bureaucratic friction in a bureaucratic contest with () and without (n = 1) rent contestability. When n= 1 bureaucratic impediments induce the individual to undertake rent-securing activities at the same level as in the two-player rent-seeking contest. However, under rent contestability the bureaucracy no longer serves as a means of extracting resources from the public. The paper concludes with the study of the effect of ‘net costs’ on bureaucratic friction. It turns out that under cotestability the only reason for creating bureaucratic friction is the ‘negative costs’ it incurs while when n = 1 the effect of the bureaucrat's net costs of generating bureaucratic friction on the optimal degree of such friction is ambiguous. Received: October 30, 2000 / Accepted: December 28, 2001 RID="*" ID="*" The authors are grateful to two anonymous referees for their valuable comments     

Corruption, economic growth, and income inequality in Africa

This paper uses panel data from African countries and a dynamic panel estimator to investigate the effects of corruption on economic growth and income distribution. I find that corruption decreases economic growth directly and indirectly through decreased investment in physical capital. A unit increase in corruption reduces the growth rates of GDP and per capita income by between 0.75 and 0.9 percentage points and between 0.39 and 0.41 percentage points per year respectively. The results also indicate that increased corruption is positively correlated with income inequality. The combined effects of decreased income growth and increased inequality suggests that corruption hurts the poor more than the rich in African countries. Received: March 19, 2001 / Accepted: December 14, 2001 RID="*" ID="*" An earlier version of this paper was presented at the first AmFiTan International Conference on Development Ethics in February 2000, Dar er Salaam, Tanzania. I thank two anonymous referees of this Journal for helpful suggestions. I am, however, solely responsible for any remaining errors.     

Central government subsidies to local public goods

We examine the welfare effects of a central government's subsidy for a local public good in a Nash equilibrium model with two types of public goods. We first show that the welfare effect depends on the substitution and evaluation effects. We also investigate the optimal subsidy rate in a second-best framework and explore how the optimal subsidy scheme depends on the relative evaluation of the two types of public goods. Received: August 20, 1998/accepted: February 12, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" We are grateful to John Quigley, Minoru Kunisaki, Tom Panella, Andy Haughwout, Steven Craig, William Hoyt, Michael Ash, Konrad Stahl, Amihai Glazer, David Wildasin and two referees for helpful comments and suggestions, An early version of this paper was presented at a seminar at University of California, Berkeley and at conferences at JAEE Annual Meeting in Japan, North American Meetings of The RSAI in Washington, WSAI conference in Hawaii, Public Choice Meeting in San Francisco.     

Voting on public pensions with hands and feet

Aging changes the political power in a democracy in favor of the older generations. With free labor mobility like that of the EU, the success of the gerontocracy is, nevertheless, limited by migration of the young generations. This connection between political voting and voting with the feet is analyzed in a two-country model with overlapping generations. The interregional competition on public pensions yields premium payments which are larger when the young generations' migration decisions take the impact on future pensions into account (strategic migration) than when these decisions are made myopically. The paper also pays attention to migration (in-)efficiency and to the implications of harmonization principles. Received: November 1999 / Accepted: July 2001 RID="*" ID="*" The paper benefited greatly from discussions at the EEA conference in Santiago de Compostela, the CESifo Workshop on Public Pensions in Munich and seminars in G?ttingen, Mainz, and Tellow. We are grateful to many seminar participants, two anonymous referees of Economics of Governance and, in particular, to Paolo Manasse for their valuable comments and creative hints. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Sounding the alarm: Impact of political instability on growth and fiscal health of the Indian economy

A noticeable change evident in the Indian political scenario since the eighties has been a sharp rise in the frequency with which governments have been ousted out of power. This augurs well for Indian democracy as it reflects a ‘political awakening’. Such changes in government, after an election reflect ‘orderly’: transfer of power and are inherent to the democratic form of governance. However, a close scrutiny of the political scenario at the state government level shows that there have been very frequent changes in government between elections. A high frequency of changes in government could be expected to result in frequent reversals or modifications in policy decisions and have a destabilizing effect on the economy. The present study is an empirical exercise undertaken at the level of state governments. It makes a first attempt to examine the impact of political instability on growth and on the fiscal health of the Indian economy. Received: September 25, 2000/Accepted: January 11, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" Sincere thanks to Professors Ajit Karnik and Abhay Pethe for their comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank the two anonymous referees for their insightful comments and suggestions, which have been of great help. The usual disclaimer applies.     

论劳动合同试用期的法律属性

由于劳动法律出于倾斜保护劳动者合法权益之考量,在法律规范上加入了大量国家干预的内容,使得劳动法律兼具有私法与公法之双重性质,因而对劳动合同试用期之法律属性的分析,不能仅仅局限于劳动法理论本身,更应以民法理论为基础。在劳动法范畴,试用期为劳动合同之特别契约;而在民法范畴,试用期为劳动合同所附之解除条件。     

The political economy of regional opting out: distributive implications of a prospective Europe of Regions

This paper builds up a model for analysing regional attitudes towards separation from national states, where separation implies `opting out' of the national income redistribution system and starting a regional one, while at the same time having direct access to supranational institutions. In an overlapping generations (OLG) framework, we show that interregional cooperation can perform the same task as intergenerational cooperation, and can prevent rich regions from wanting to separate from poor nations. In the second part of the paper, we estimate the impact of alternative institutional settings on regional welfare by using data on the inter-governmental financial relations of the Italian regions with the central government. June, 2001 / Accepted: May, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" We would like to thank Margherita Borella, Chris Flinn, Harold Hochman, Jeff Petchey, Stefano Piperno, Pierre Salmon, Bob Searle and seminar participants at Brescia, Torino, Paris (annual meeting of the European Public Choice Society 2001) and Marseille for comments and discussion. We would also like to thank the editor, Kai Konrad, and three referees for their helpful comments.     

Work,employment and engagement conditions in a female‐dominated public service occupation after restructuring/outsourcing

Most research on the phenomenon of public service restructuring/outsourcing focuses on lower skilled work in peripheral activities and typically provides an overview of effects on work, employment and employment relations. Through an in‐depth case study of probation, the intention of this article is to explore professional worker experiences of the restructuring/outsourcing of a core public service activity where the workforce is female dominated. The article highlights three dimensions of job quality that all suffered deterioration—work, employment and engagement. The case of probation adds to evidence demonstrating that employees experience adverse effects even though transfer regulations and union agreements supposedly protect workers. Probation also stands as an exemplar of impoverishment processes in a female‐dominated occupation which reinforces the view that public services can no longer be relied upon to provide high‐quality jobs for highly qualified women.     

The norm game: punishing enemies and not friends

Three mean field models of the norm game are explored analytically. The strategies are: to obey the norm or not and to punish those who break it or not. The punishment, the temptation, the anger and the punishment cost are modeled by four parameters; for the fixed points, only two ratios of these parameters are relevant. For each model, we consider its variant with two mutually punishing groups. We show that all solutions are the same as for the case in one group. This means in particular, that in both groups the amount of defectors is the same.     

Can asymmetric punishment deter endogenous bribery

This paper studies the effects of asymmetric punishment of bribery on both bribery and compliance with regulations. The bribe amount is decided via Nash bargaining and regulatory compliance and whistle-blowing are strategic decisions. Moreover, investigations of bribery and noncompliance occur in a manner that may be interdependent. We show that, under symmetric punishment, inducing whistle-blowing has no effect on the frequency of bribery. When the bribery and noncompliance investigations are independent, a switch from symmetric to asymmetric punishment either makes no difference or induces more nonharassment bribery. Only when bribery detection increases the chance of noncompliance detection and asymmetric punishment leads to whistle-blowing for both types of entrepreneurs, can the shift succeed in reducing noncompliance. The result is robust to the case where legalization of bribe-giving is not feasible for nonharassment bribes.     

Social norms,costly punishment and the evolution of cooperation

Within a co-evolutionary framework of reputations, strategies and social norms, we study the role of punishment in the promotion of cooperation. Norms differ according to whether they allow or do not allow the punishment action to be a part of the strategies, and, in the case of the former, they further differ in terms of whether they encourage or do not encourage the punishment action. In such a framework, depending on the applied social norm, players are first given different reputations based on their employed strategies. Players then update their strategies accordingly after they observe the payoff differences among different strategies. Finally, over a longer horizon, the evolution of the social norms may be driven by the average payoffs of all members of the society. The strategy dynamics are articulated under different social norms. It is found that costly punishment does contribute to the evolution toward cooperation. Not only does the attraction basin of the cooperative evolutionary stable state become larger, but the speed of convergence to the CESS also becomes faster. These two properties are further enhanced if the punishment action is encouraged by the social norm.     

公路工程惩治与预防腐败体系建设探究

党的十七大报告深刻阐述了坚决惩治腐败和有效预防腐败的重要性,要求全党充分认识反腐败斗争的长期性、复杂性、艰巨性,把反腐倡廉建设放在更加突出的位置。文章针对公路工程建设近年来反腐倡廉工作出现的新形势、新情况、新问题,在惩治和预防腐败体系建设方面提出自己的见解。     

审计全覆盖下国有企业出资人、内部审计与腐败治理——基于博弈模型的分析

反腐败工作一直是党和国家审计战略部署的重中之重，对我国的发展和稳定具有重要意义。在塞贝利斯（Tsebelis）模型的基础上分别建立只有内部审计的一级监督机制和出资人-内部审计的二级监督机制博弈模型，探讨什么样的机制设计和奖惩制度能更好地抑制腐败行为的发生，进而完善对国企经济责任人不敢腐、不能腐的监督治理体系。研究发现，一级监督机制下，内部审计部门工作人员容易偷懒从而纵容腐败的发生，所以在审计全覆盖要求下，有必要建立健全国企出资人对内部审计部门进行再审计的二级监督机制，并通过加大对内部审计人员的惩罚力度、适当调节出资人审计部门工作人员的奖励力度、减小对经济责任人腐败的惩罚力度，进而降低经济责任人腐败的概率。     

The Economics of Capital Punishment

The argument for and against capital punishment turns on its effectiveness as a deterrent. Professor E.J. Mishan argues that the evidence is now clear that capital punishment saves innocent lives.