Rule Enforcing Through Ordering
This addresses the issue of enforcement inefficiency for minor offenses in large populations, such as traffic violations in cities, by providing a practical incentive mechanism for authorities.
The paper tackles the problem of low compliance with fines for minor offenses by proposing that the central authority processes offenders in a publicly known order, which incentivizes individuals to pay fines to avoid larger punishments. The result shows that this mechanism increases expected total payments to the authority considerably, as demonstrated analytically and in realistic experiments.
In many real world situations, like minor traffic offenses in big cities, a central authority is tasked with periodic administering punishments to a large number of individuals. Common practice is to give each individual a chance to suffer a smaller fine and be guaranteed to avoid the legal process with probable considerably larger punishment. However, thanks to the large number of offenders and a limited capacity of the central authority, the individual risk is typically small and a rational individual will not choose to pay the fine. Here we show that if the central authority processes the offenders in a publicly known order, it properly incentives the offenders to pay the fine. We show analytically and on realistic experiments that our mechanism promotes non-cooperation and incentives individuals to pay. Moreover, the same holds for an arbitrary coalition. We quantify the expected total payment the central authority receives, and show it increases considerably.