The Law and Economics literature on public law enforcement has generally treated separately the issue of marginal deterrence from that of punishing repeated offenders though escalating penalties. We extend the model provided by Emons (2003) to show how pursuing both policies may generate an...

This paper attempts to outline the virtues and the perverse effects of a Demerit Point System (DPS). Under a DPS, once overcome a given threshold of demerit points, infringers are punished by severe non-monetary sanctions (such as the temporarily suspension of driving license in traffic...