TY  - JOUR
AU  - Polinsky,A. Mitchell
AU  - Shavell,Steven
TI  - Corruption and Optimal Law Enforcement
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 6945
PY  - 1999
Y2  - February 1999
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6945
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w6945.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

Steven Shavell
Harvard Law School
1575 Massachusetts Avenue
Hauser Hall 508
Cambridge, MA  02138
Tel: 617/495-3668
Fax: 617/496-2256
E-Mail: shavell@law.harvard.edu
AB  - 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.
ER  -