We examine the impact of increasing whistleblowing bounties on whistleblowers’ strategy and regulatory efficiency in detecting fraud. Our analysis shows the regulator extracts information about the incidence of fraud from whistleblowers’ actions, and the quality of such information depends on the size of whistleblowing bounties. With a larger bounty, upon receiving a whistleblowing report, the quality of the regulator’s information about fraud deteriorates, whereas upon observing no whistleblowing, the information quality about no fraud improves. Although the informational improvement upon no whistleblowing has not been widely discussed, we demonstrate it is a key determinant of the optimal whistleblowing program. We show, considering the informational value of whistleblowing and no whistleblowing, the regulator should set the bounty to encourage more whistleblowing when the prior belief of fraud is stronger and the insider is better informed. Our analysis generates policy and empirical implications for designing and studying whistleblowing programs.

我们研究了增加举报奖金对举报人在检测欺诈方面的策略和监管效率的影响。我们的分析表明，监管机构从举报人的行为中提取了有关欺诈发生率的信息，而此类信息的质量取决于举报奖金的大小。随着赏金的增加，在收到举报报告后，监管机构关于欺诈的信息质量会下降，而在观察到没有举报时，关于没有欺诈的信息质量会提高。尽管没有举报的信息改进尚未得到广泛讨论，但我们证明它是最佳举报程序的关键决定因素。我们表明，考虑到举报和不举报的信息价值，监管机构应该设置赏金，以鼓励更多的人在先前的欺诈信念更强并且内部人员更了解情况时鼓励更多的举报。我们的分析为设计和研究举报计划产生了政策和实证意义。