Crime Aggregation, Deterrence, and Witness Credibility
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- We present a model for the equilibrium frequency of offenses and the informativeness of witness reports when potential offenders can commit multiple offenses and witnesses are subject to retaliation risk and idiosyncratic reporting preferences. We compare two ways of handling multiple accusations discussed in legal scholarship: (i) When convictions are based on the probability that the defendant committed at least one, unspecified offense and entail a severe punishment, potential offenders induce negative correlation in witnesses’ private information, which leads to uninformative reports, information aggregation failures, and frequent offenses in equilibrium. Moreover, lowering the punishment in case of conviction can improve deterrence and the informativeness of witnesses’ reports. (ii) When accusations are treated separately to adjudicate guilt and conviction entails a severe punishment, witness reports are highly informative and offenses are infrequent in equilibrium.
Description
Type of resource | text |
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Form | online resource |
Extent | 1 online resource |
Place | Stanford (Calif.) |
Publisher | Stanford Institute for Theoretical Economics |
Publication date | 2020 |
Language | English |
Digital origin | born digital |
Creators/Contributors
Author | Pei, Harry | |
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Author | Strulovici, Bruno | |
Speaker | Pei, Harry |
Subjects
Subject | Soft evidence |
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Subject | Deterrence |
Subject | Negative correlation |
Subject | Coordination |
Genre | Conference papers and proceedings |
Bibliographic information
Note | Presented at SITE on July 31, 2020 |
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Session series |
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Session |
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Location | https://purl.stanford.edu/bj334wj0944 |
Repository | Stanford Institute for Theoretical Economics |
Access conditions
- Use and reproduction
- This publication is open for research use. Copyright is retained by the author(s) or their heir(s).
Collection
Stanford Institute for Theoretical Economics (SITE) Archives
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