Marginal Deterrence in Enforcement of Law

Dilip Mookherjee and Ivan Png

Journal of Political Economy, 1994, vol. 102, issue 5, 1039-66

Abstract: The authors characterize optimal enforcement in a setting in which individuals can select among various levels of some activity, all of which are monitored at the same rate but may be prosecuted and punished at varying rates. For less harmful acts, marginal expected penalties ought to fall short of marginal harms caused. Indeed, some range of very minor acts should be legalized. For more harmful acts, whether marginal expected penalties should fall short of or exceed marginal harms depends on the balance between monitoring and prosecution/punishment costs. The authors also explore how the optimal enforcement policy varies with changes in these costs. Copyright 1994 by University of Chicago Press.

Date: 1994
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (97)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/261963 full text (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers. See http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JPE for details.

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:ucp:jpolec:v:102:y:1994:i:5:p:1039-66

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Political Economy from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().