Punishment Menus

Guim, Mauricio; Klick, Jonathan; Mungan, Murat C.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.3037730

Cited by 2 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…1 There are a handful of exceptions, e.g., Polinsky, 2006, Raskolnikov, 2009, Mungan, 2011, Guim et al, 2021, and Mungan, 2021b. We review how punishment menus enter the analysis in these articles, and explain how our observations differ from those made in these articles, in section 2.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Similarly, Guim et al (2021) show that allowing potential offenders to choose the enforcement regime they will be subject to, ex-ante, can lead to welfare gains by reducing enforcement costs as well as enhancing deterrence. In Guim et al (2021), people with low [high] offense propensities choose a scheme consisting of a low [high] audit probability and a large [small] sanction. This is because compared to potential offenders with high propensities, those with low offense propensities prioritize avoiding audits altogether compared to the size of the sanction for committing the offense.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Letting offenders choose their punishment?

Grolleau

Mungan

Mzoughi

2022

Kyklos

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Punishment menus allow offenders to choose the punishment to which they will be subjected from a set of options. We present several behaviorally informed rationales for why punishment menus may serve as effective deterrents, notably by causing people to refrain from entering a calculative mindset; reducing their psychological reactance; causing them to reconsider the reputational impacts of punishment; and reducing suspicions about whether the act is enforced for rent‐seeking purposes. We argue that punishment menus can outperform the traditional single punishment if these effects can be harnessed properly. Our observations thus constitute a challenge, based on behavioral arguments, to the conventional view that adding (possibly unexercised) punishment options to an existing punishment scheme is unlikely to increase deterrence or welfare. We explain how heterogeneities among individuals can pose problems to designing effective punishment menus and discuss potential solutions. After explaining how punishment menus, if designed and implemented benevolently, can serve socially desirable goals, we caution against their possible misuse by self‐interested governments.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Letting offenders choose their punishment?

Grolleau

Mungan

Mzoughi

2022

Kyklos

Self Cite

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Rewards versus Imprisonment: The Impact of Choice

Mungan

2022

Review of Law &Amp; Economics

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Imprisonment and monetary rewards for non-convictions can similarly incentivize potential offenders to refrain from committing crime. Although imprisonment is expensive, it may still enjoy a cost advantage over rewards. This is because only detected criminals are imprisoned, whereas rewards need to be provided to the remaining, much larger, population. In this article, I demonstrate that the possible cost disadvantages of rewards are mitigated when people are offered a choice between an enforcement scheme involving no rewards and another involving rewards coupled with longer imprisonment sentences. Specifically, by using rewards in this manner, one can jointly reduce crime, time served per convict, and the tax burden of the criminal justice system, under the same conditions as one could by introducing rewards without choice in an environment where there is perfect detection. Moreover, monetary rewards provide incentives through wealth transfers, but imprisonment operates by destroying wealth. This leads choice-based reward regimes to be optimal unless the imprisonment elasticity of deterrence is higher than is empirically observed.

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Punishment Menus

Cited by 2 publications

References 15 publications

Letting offenders choose their punishment?

Letting offenders choose their punishment?

Rewards versus Imprisonment: The Impact of Choice

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