Abstract
Regulators typically treat frequent violators more harshly. When does such harsh treatment maximize overall compliance? We consider the role of two factors: responsiveness to penalties and costs of sanctions. A novel insight is that maintaining a credible threat of sanction against infrequent violators is relatively cheap because that threat seldom needs to be backed up. In a Clean Water Act application, the marginal sanction deters ten times as many violations when directed at infrequent violators. On net, this difference is due to a sanction cost effect, not because infrequent violators are marginally more responsive to the threat of punishment.
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