Hanington (Harrington, W., 1988. Enforcement leverage when penalties are restricted. Journal of Public Economics 37, 29-53) offers an explanation for how relatively high compliance rates might co-exist with low expected fines. His results are highly dependent on the assumptions that all firms are identical and their compliance costs are known. This paper shows that Hanington's results are not necessarily robust in a more general model where asymmetric information and uncertainty are present. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science S.A, All rights reserved.