Regulating harmless activity to fight crime

Florian Baumann () and Tim Friehe

Journal of Economics, 2014, vol. 113, issue 1, 79-95

Abstract: This paper establishes that regulating harmless activity can be an effective instrument of law enforcement when the harmless activity and the harmful activity are interdependent. This type of regulation is not without cost, as it distorts the individual choices made by both law-abiding and non-law-abiding individuals. However, it can be socially advantageous when the impact on welfare resulting from changes in the choices of offenders dominates the impact of changes in non-offenders’ decisions; in addition, increasing deterrence by other means (such as raising the probability of detection or the magnitude of sanctions) can incur much higher costs. Copyright Springer-Verlag Wien 2014

Keywords: Optimal law enforcement; Legal activity; Substitutes; Complements; K42; H23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jeczfn:v:113:y:2014:i:1:p:79-95

DOI: 10.1007/s00712-013-0359-z

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