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Davis, Kevin E. --- "Multijurisdictional enforcement games: the case of anti-bribery law" [2018] ELECD 254; in Arlen, Jennifer (ed), "Research Handbook on Corporate Crime and Financial Misdealing" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018) 151

Book Title: Research Handbook on Corporate Crime and Financial Misdealing

Editor(s): Arlen, Jennifer

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN: 9781783474462

Section: Chapter 5

Section Title: Multijurisdictional enforcement games: the case of anti-bribery law

Author(s): Davis, Kevin E.

Number of pages: 24

Abstract/Description:

Economic analyses of law enforcement generally focus on situations in which law is enforced by a single public agency, in a single jurisdiction, which faithfully follows its announced enforcement strategy. This does not reflect the reality of enforcement aimed at corporate crime, which commonly involves multiple agencies, often based in different jurisdictions, and which adjust their enforcement strategy in response to prior misconduct. This chapter will discuss the analysis of multijurisdictional law enforcement, with particular reference to cases concerning foreign bribery. The premise is that this kind of interaction can be modelled as a dynamic multi-player game in which the players include both enforcement agencies and firms. In principle, this kind of analysis can be used to formulate testable hypotheses about outcomes of interactions between regulators and firms. Unfortunately, opportunities to evaluate these kinds of hypotheses empirically are limited because many aspects of the structure of the game are difficult to observe, and firms’ misconduct and regulators’ enforcement activities typically are only observable when they result in formal sanctions. The chapter concludes with a discussion of some of the challenges inherent in normative analysis of the outcomes of multi-jurisdictional law enforcement games.