Discretionary vs. Mandatory Prosecution: A Game-Theoretic Approach to Comparative Criminal Procedure
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Keisuke Nakao
Abstract
Using a game-theoretic model of criminal procedure, we investigate relative merits and demerits of discretionary and mandatory prosecution. The game illustrates a prosecutor's dilemma associated with his two tasks: evidence production and case screening. Discretionary prosecution makes use of incriminating evidence to dispose of weak cases, but discretionary prosecution may suffer the moral-hazard problem in evidence production more seriously than mandatory prosecution. Our welfare analyses suggest that mandatory prosecution outperforms discretionary prosecution when evidence transmission from the prosecutor to the judge is accurate and/or when the cost of litigation incurred by the prosecutor is large.
©2012 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
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Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Law and Finance: What Matters? Hong Kong as a Test Case
- Judicial Politics in Unstable Democracies: The Case of the Philippine Supreme Court, An Empirical Analysis 1986-2010
- In Quest of Judicial Independence for Protecting Private Property: Evidence from Constitutional Review in South Korea
- Developing Human Capabilities Through Law: Is Indian Law Failing?
- Dentsū Changed Nothing: Reexamining Karoshi in Japan Through Shavell's Insights on the Incentives to Prevent Accidents
- Discretionary vs. Mandatory Prosecution: A Game-Theoretic Approach to Comparative Criminal Procedure
- Law and Technology of Data Privacy: A Case for International Harmonization
