Suchergebnisse

The article shows the importance of respecting the Rule of Law for organization of economic exchanges in terms of the New Institutional Economics (NIE). A brief overview of traditions in the study of the Rule of Law as a phenomenon is presented, including the approach to the study of this principle within the NIE. The costs of rights guarantying and redress as well as types I and II errors regarding rules enforcement are demonstrated. The illustration of types I and II errors problems within the context of the Rule of Law principle implementation in the area of Russian antimonopoly legislation is proposed.

This article analyzes the antitrust enforcement practice in Russia (2008–2010) in the area of competition restricting agreements (horizontal and vertical). The analysis is based on courts decisions database (litigations with the Russian competition authority - FAS). Database contains 242 cases, including 139 horizontal agreements, 103 vertical and mixed agreements. On the basis of this database we have analyzed important features of the interpretation and implementation of the competition law in Russian practice, priority areas of the enforcement. We considered the antitrust policy taking into account the risks of errors of 1 and 2 types, including the problem of the flexibility of prohibitions (PER SE vs RULE OF REASON), standards of proof, consistency of enforcement, etc.

This article emphasizes that the sphere of creation of legal rules is the most important role in carrying out policy in the field of judicial expertise. It is the law that indicates limits of law enforcement. Errors at the stage of political development are the most dangerous as they affect the achievement of policy and lead to consequences for the whole society.

Redundancy is a four-letter word. According to courts and scholars, redundant litigation is costly, unfair, and confounding. Modern civil procedure has a (nearly) maximalist preference for centralization, and various rules seek to limit duplicative suits within and across court systems. This seemingly dominant view stands in marked contrast to the reality of the modern regulatory state. Redundant public-private enforcement, in which public and private actors have overlapping authority to enforce the law, is ubiquitous. Redundant enforcement also is noticeably underrepresented in the substantial literature on private and public enforcement, which typically treats government agencies and private attorneys general as substitutes rather than complements. This Article seeks to fill these gaps. It begins with a survey of the myriad forms of redundant enforcement in U.S. law, and then turns to a defense of redundant public-private enforcement. Scholars of engineering and public administration have built up a powerful literature on the potential uses of redundancy, and this Article applies those insights to overlapping public and private enforcement in U.S. law. Drawing on those literatures, this Article derives principles of redundant enforcement that account for the diversity of agents and the potential for strategic behavior. It argues that redundancy may be an effective response to errors, resource constraints, information problems, and agency costs, if redundant-enforcement regimes harness multiple diverse agents and are tailored to the relevant regulatory environment. Specifically, if the lawmaker worries that public or private agents are missing good cases, redundant authority may help to reduce errors, increase resources, aggregate information, and improve monitoring-though permitting duplicative suits may undercut these gains. Meanwhile, if the lawmaker is concerned about under-enforcing settlements or judgments, symmetrically non-preclusive redundant litigation may be a valuable tool-though damages should ...

Abstract:Judge Posner (2010) has identified an important lacuna in law and economics, namely a tendency to ignore organization theory. I will apply the tools of organization theory to an area almost completely neglected in law and economics, forensic science. Posner points us to tools we should make use of; I am pointing to an application we have neglected. Forensic science today is characterized by a twofold monopoly. First, evidence is typically examined by one crime lab only. Second, that same lab will normally be the only one to offer an interpretation of the results of the examination it performs. Crime labs today are typically organized under law enforcement agencies, which may create conscious and unconscious biases in favor of police and prosecution. These organizational features of forensic science today encourage errors and wrongful convictions.

Chris Edwards


Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D‑OR) held a hearing last week to counter the House Republican plan to cut the recent IRS enforcement boost. Sen. Wyden said, "If you're looking for the big winners of the McCarthy IRS defunding plan, it's billionaires and corporations who cheat on their taxes … Repealing that funding is a $191 billion giveaway to wealthy tax cheats."
I offered a different view at the hearing. I noted that tax enforcement imposes collateral damage, that the tax gap has been stable for decades, and that the U.S. tax gap appears to be smaller than Europe's. The "tax gap" means unpaid taxes from errors and cheating.
Here's one problem with Sen. Wyden's view: IRS audits find relatively smaller errors and cheating on higher‐​income returns than lower‐​income returns. As shown in the table below, IRS audits recommend additional tax of 5 to 8 percent of income for middle‐​income households, but just 1 to 4 percent of income for high‐​income households. These are averages within income groups over 2017 to 2021.
For example, for households facing additional tax, the average is $6,100 for those earning $75,000 to $100,000, which is 7.0 percent of income, and it is $117,033 for those earning $5 million to $10 million, which is 1.7 percent of income. Note that the average audit change of $117,033 for this high‐​income group may seem large, but that is just 6 percent of the average tax paid by these households. Also note that the large relative audit change in the bottom group mainly stems from errors and cheating on the earned income tax credit.
Why does the IRS find relatively smaller errors and cheating at the top? It may because these households are more likely to hire expert accountants and lawyers who have their reputations on the line. The relatively smaller errors at the top are impressive, given that high‐​income returns often involve complex issues such as business income and capital gains.







Data Notes. The IRS publishes aggregate results of audits in its annual Data Book. My table is based on a Government Accountability Office summary of the IRS data in GAO-22–104960 (p. 34).
The income groups are based on "total positive income" not adjusted gross income (AGI). However, the IRS and GAO do not appear to provide average total positive income within the income groups, so I roughly estimated it using average AGI for 2019 within AGI income groups.
A final note is that these are the additional taxes "recommended" by IRS auditors. But many taxpayers appeal these amounts and get them reduced. Also, some taxpayers challenge IRS audit results in court and many of them win, as discussed here.