Information and policing

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Ichihashi, Shota
• 署名单位: Queens University - Canada
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2025.105992
• 发表日期: 2025
• 关键词: Information design; crime; Policing; privacy

摘要

Agents decide whether to commit a crime based on their private types, which capture their heterogeneous returns from a crime. The police have information about these types. The police search agents, without commitment, to detect crime subject to a search capacity constraint. The deterrent effect of policing is lost when the police have full information about agents' types. The crime-minimizing information structure prevents the police from identifying agents who face high returns from a crime, while still allowing them to adjust their search intensities based on the types of agents who face low returns from a crime. The result extends to the case in which the police endogenously choose search capacity at a cost.