Flipping markets to virtue with qui tam and restorative justice

Contemporary economies are characterised by a regulatory capitalism in which both markets and regulation extend their sway. Freer markets with more rules nurture markets in vice that game regulation. Tax avoidance and evasion are used to illustrate these dynamics. Yet freer markets with more rules also engender markets in compliance services that can be virtuous and more dominant (more demanded) than markets in vice. As a result of that dominance, firms and individuals often comply at levels that seem economically irrational virtue. To hold corporations to compliance through markets in virtue requires regulation with toughened enforcement capabilities for drawing out insider information about looming problems. Qui tam is suggested as one option. This option can be complemented with a more deliberative approach, restorative justice. One reason to consider this package of hybrid private–public enforcement that knows no jurisdictional boundaries is that when fraud is globalised, firms organise their affairs so that fraud is off-shore from all state regulators with an interest in exercising jurisdiction against it. 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.