TY  - JOUR
AU  - Polinsky,A. Mitchell
TI  - Private versus Public Enforcement of Fines
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 338
PY  - 1979
Y2  - April 1979
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w0338
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w0338.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
A. Mitchell Polinsky
Stanford Law School
Stanford University
Stanford, CA  94305
Tel: 650/723-0886
Fax: 650/723-3557
E-Mail: polinsky@stanford.edu
AB  - The present paper analyzes the competitive, monopolistic, and public enforcement of fines allowing for the costs of enforcement to differ by the choice of the enforcer. There are a number of reasons to expect such differences. First, the benefits from coordinating enforcement -- for example, avoiding duplication of investigative effort and exploiting economies of scale in information processing -- are obtained under public enforcement and monopolistic enforcement, but not under competitive enforcement. Second, the profit motive might be imagined to lead to lower costs under either form of private enforcement relative to public enforcement. Third, when the revenue from fines under public enforcement is not sufficient to finance enforcement costs, there may be a deadweight burden incurred in making up the deficit from other sources. Conversely, if the fine revenue exceeds enforcement costs, the effective cost of enforcement would be lower. On balance, these considerations suggest that monopolistic enforcement may be cheaper than competitive enforcement, but that public enforcement could be more or less expensive than private enforcement.
ER  -