Evidence disclosure and severity of punishments

The relationship between legal offenses and punishment is well studied by scholars of sociology, economics and law. Economists contend that punishment is a cost of committing an offense, hence an increase in the severity of punishments should decrease incentives to commit legal offenses. And the efficiency of legal punishments are studied generally from this perspective: giving efficient incentives to commit legal offense. This paper studies the relationship between punishment and evidence disclosure in a game theoretical model. A defendant is trying to persuade a judge by presenting evidence to take a favorable legal action rather than less favorable ones on his case. I show that the equilibrium disclosure of the defendant is not affected by a change in the scale of legal actions when there is no uncertainty on how the judge evaluates evidence. With uncertainty, however, the defendant can be induced to disclose more information by decreasing the severity ratio of the most unfavorable legal action to the most favorable one. This shows that in the more realistic case of uncertainty the severity of punishments has an effect on evidence disclosure and efficiency of punishment schedule should be analyzed by internalizing its effect on evidence disclosure as well

Evidence disclosure and severity of punishments

The relationship between legal offenses and punishment is well studied by scholars of sociology, economics and law. Economists contend that punishment is a cost of committing an offense, hence an increase in the severity of punishments should decrease incentives to commit legal offenses. And the efficiency of legal punishments are studied generally from this perspective: giving efficient incentives to commit legal offense. This paper studies the relationship between punishment and evidence disclosure in a game theoretical model. A defendant is trying to persuade a judge by presenting evidence to take a favorable legal action rather than less favorable ones on his case. I show that the equilibrium disclosure of the defendant is not affected by a change in the scale of legal actions when there is no uncertainty on how the judge evaluates evidence. With uncertainty, however, the defendant can be induced to disclose more information by decreasing the severity ratio of the most unfavorable legal action to the most favorable one. This shows that in the more realistic case of uncertainty the severity of punishments has an effect on evidence disclosure and efficiency of punishment schedule should be analyzed by internalizing its effect on evidence disclosure as well

An axiomatization of the inner core

We axiomatize the inner core in a similar way as the one proposed by Aumann (1985) in order to characterize the NTU value

An axiomatization of the inner core

We axiomatize the inner core in a similar way as the one proposed by Aumann (1985) in order to characterize the NTU value.

Cooperative games : non-transferable utility and asymmetric information

Cooperative games with non-transferable utility (NTU) and under asymmetric information are studied from three complementary points of view: constructive, axiomatic and non-cooperative. Professor Shapley's fictitious-transfer procedure solves NTU-games by approximating them via simpler games where transfers of weighted utilities are feasible. This construction allows to extend any solution concept defined for games with transferable utility to some larger class of NTU-games. Closely related, the consistent Shapley value of Professors Maschler and Owen is obtained by approximating NTU-games via hyperplane games. Professor Myerson extended the fictitious-transfer procedure to cooperative games under asymmetric information by introducing the concept of virtual utility. The solutions generated by the constructions described in the previous paragraph need to be further justified. Here is precisely one of the objectives pursued by the axiomatic approach. We propose an axiomatization of the inner core, of the consistent Shapley value and of Myerson's extension of the random dictatorship solution for bargaining problems with verifiable information. The Nash program aims at characterizing the set of relevant non-cooperative equilibrium outcomes of some explicit bargaining procedures. Following this idea, we define and justify a new single-valued solution concept for NTU-games that coincides with the Raiffa discrete solution on the class of bargaining problems and with the consistent Shapley value on the class of hyperplane games. On the other hand, we obtain kinds of utopia points by characterizing the equilibrium outcomes of principal-agent models in simple frameworks with one-sided information. Randomizing between the utopia points of the different players generates a reference point for situations where bargaining power is distributed across the players. In a context with verifiable information, we characterize Myerson's constructive solution to the principal-agent problem as being a set of refined equilibrium outcomes of a natural bargaining procedure.Doctorat en sciences économiques (ECON 3) -- UCL, 200