Economics Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Crime: A crime is an act or omission that violates established laws, punishable by the legal system to maintain social order and protect individuals or society. It encompasses actions like theft, assault, fraud, or unlawful behavior that undermines public safety, rights, or well-being, warranting legal consequences or sanctions. See also Criminal law, Law, Laws, State (Polity), Society._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Economic Theories on Crime - Dictionary of Arguments
Parisi I 22 Crime/criminal law/Economic theories/Miceli: Although the economic analysis of crime has long been a subfield of law and economics, an interesting question in the positive theory of law is why a separate category of “crimes” is needed.* Tort law: After all, both criminal and tort law are concerned with internalizing unwanted harms, so one might ask why tort law alone is not sufficient. It is not an adequate answer to simply say that crimes are intentional and torts are accidental because the economic model of tort law as outlined above can easily accommodate intent (see, for example, Landes and Posner, 1987(3), ch. 6). Economists thus seek a deeper reason. Calabresi/Melamed: One interesting perspective suggested by Calabresi and Melamed (1972)(4) is that criminal law is needed to enforce the GTS. ((s) General Transaction Structure, >Transaction costs/Coleman). Example: (...) a thief who steals someone else’s property - that is, an entitlement protected by a property rule. When the thief is caught, why not simply make him pay the victim the value of the stolen property? If the thief values the property more than the owner, this “transaction” would produce an “efficient theft,” which seems no different than a court’s imposition of liability on spark-spewing railroads or other injurers. Enforcement: once we accept the validity of coercive exchanges as efficient in those contexts, why should we not be prepared to accept them in all such cases of forced exchange? The question turns out to be a difficult one that is sidestepped by the BPS model of crime (>Criminal law/Becker), which simply takes the existence of the criminal category as given and proceeds to derive the optimal enforcement policy. Solution/liability rules: (...) the reason why liability rules are not universally allowed as the basis for exchange under the GTS[:] [l]iability rules require courts to estimate the value of the entitlement to the owner after the fact, Parisi I 23 which means that there is no guarantee that the resulting exchange is efficient. Property rules: In contrast, property rules ensure that only efficient exchanges occur because the owner has the right to refuse the transaction. This is why property rules are preferred when transaction costs are low. Criminal penalty: (...) what happens if a thief violates an owner’s property rule by stealing the protected item? If the legal remedy is simply to require the thief to pay compensation, then he has succeeded in transforming the property rule into a liability rule. To prevent this, some further sanction (or “kicker”) is needed to discourage the thief from violating the GTS (General Transaction Structure) in the first place; that is, from bypassing the market. This enhanced sanction represents the criminal penalty. Sanction/compensation: What is important is that the sanction in question is intended as a punishment for an illegitimate transaction, as opposed to compensation for a legitimate transaction (Cooter, 1984)(5). It is this punitive aspect of criminal law that distinguishes it from tort law and thereby offers a resolution of the paradox of “efficient theft.” >Criminal law/Economic theories. * See, for example, Friedman (2000(1), ch. 18) and Posner (1983)(2). 1. Friedman, David (2000). Law’s Order: What Economics Has to Do with the Law and Why It Matters. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 2. Posner, Richard (1983). The Economics of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 3. Landes, William and Richard Posner (1987). The Economic Structure of Tort Law. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press. 4. Calabresi, Guido and A. Douglas Melamed (1972). “Property Rules, Liability Rules, and Inalienability: One View of the Cathedral.” Harvard Law Review 85: 1089–1128. 5. Cooter, Robert (1984). “Prices and Sanctions.” Columbia Law Review 84: 1523–1560. Miceli, Thomas J. „Economic Models of Law“. In: Parisi, Francesco (ed) (2017). The Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics. Vol 1: Methodology and Concepts. NY: Oxford University Press._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Economic Theories Parisi I Francesco Parisi (Ed) The Oxford Handbook of Law and Economics: Volume 1: Methodology and Concepts New York 2017 |
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