An economic theory of optimal enactment and enforcement of laws

Thomas J. Miceli and Murat C. Mungan

International Review of Law and Economics, 2021, vol. 68, issue C

Abstract: We consider a government’s interrelated decisions of enacting laws prohibiting harmful behavior and choosing how aggressively to enforce those laws. There are three broad policies available to the government in this regard: not prohibiting the act at all, enacting a law and enforcing it, and enacting a law and not enforcing it. When enactment is costly and a fraction of the population reflexively complies with the law once its enactment has been announced (reflecting an expressive function of law), all three policies may be optimal, depending on the severity of the harm from the act and the fraction of reflexive compliers.

Keywords: Crime; Illegality; Law enforcement; Expressive function of law (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K14 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0144818821000533
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:irlaec:v:68:y:2021:i:c:s0144818821000533

DOI: 10.1016/j.irle.2021.106029

Access Statistics for this article

International Review of Law and Economics is currently edited by C. Ott, A. W. Katz and H-B. Schäfer

More articles in International Review of Law and Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().