IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/amerec/v62y2017i2p217-221.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Optimal Public Policy Against Identity Theft

Author

Listed:
  • Philip E. Graves
  • Robert L. Sexton

Abstract

Identity theft occurs to 7% of the U.S. population 16 or older annually (17.6 million persons in 2014) and results in costs to those harmed of more than US$15 billion annually. The usual household response (85% of people in 2014) is to take actions to prevent identity theft, ranging from low-cost document shredding and password changes to more costly professional services. These costs are disproportionately borne by the elderly and female population cohorts, raising concerns of equity along with the more traditional efficiency emphasis of economics. Vulnerable households are forced to substantially increase monitoring costs in response to the threat of identity theft, a response that we will show to be both inefficient and inequitable vis-Ã -vis substituting tougher statutes against identity theft.

Suggested Citation

  • Philip E. Graves & Robert L. Sexton, 2017. "Optimal Public Policy Against Identity Theft," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 62(2), pages 217-221, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:amerec:v:62:y:2017:i:2:p:217-221
    DOI: 10.1177/0569434516682712
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0569434516682712
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0569434516682712?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Graves, Philip E & Lee, Dwight R & Sexton, Robert L, 1989. "Statutes versus Enforcement: The Case of the Optimal Speed Limit," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(4), pages 932-936, September.
    2. Keith B. Anderson & Erik Durbin & Michael A. Salinger, 2008. "Identity Theft," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(2), pages 171-192, Spring.
    3. Gary S. Becker, 1974. "Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach," NBER Chapters, in: Essays in the Economics of Crime and Punishment, pages 1-54, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. McCormick, Robert E & Tollison, Robert D, 1984. "Crime on the Court," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 92(2), pages 223-235, April.
    5. Polinsky, Mitchell & Shavell, Steven, 1979. "The Optimal Tradeoff between the Probability and Magnitude of Fines," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(5), pages 880-891, December.
    6. Gary S. Becker & William M. Landes, 1974. "Essays in the Economics of Crime and Punishment," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number beck74-1.
    7. Robert Barro, 1973. "The control of politicians: An economic model," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 19-42, March.
    8. Ehrlich, Isaac, 1975. "The Deterrent Effect of Capital Punishment: A Question of Life and Death," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 65(3), pages 397-417, June.
    9. Ehrlich, Isaac, 1973. "Participation in Illegitimate Activities: A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(3), pages 521-565, May-June.
    10. Gary S. Becker & George J. Stigler, 1974. "Law Enforcement, Malfeasance, and Compensation of Enforcers," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 3(1), pages 1-18, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Isaac Ehrlich, 1996. "Crime, Punishment, and the Market for Offenses," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 10(1), pages 43-67, Winter.
    2. Ana María Cerro & Osvaldo Meloni, 2000. "Determinants of the crime rate in Argentina during the '90s," Estudios de Economia, University of Chile, Department of Economics, vol. 27(2 Year 20), pages 297-311, December.
    3. Becker, Gary S., 1992. "The Economic Way of Looking at Life," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 1992-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    4. Eide, Erling & Rubin, Paul H. & Shepherd, Joanna M., 2006. "Economics of Crime," Foundations and Trends(R) in Microeconomics, now publishers, vol. 2(3), pages 205-279, December.
    5. Ehrlich, Isaac & Saito, Tetsuya, 2010. "Taxing guns vs. taxing crime: An application of the "market for offenses model"," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 32(5), pages 670-689, September.
    6. Isztin, Péter, 2018. "Bűnök és büntetések - tanulságok a közgazdaságtani irodalomból [Crimes and punishments: Insights from economic literature]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(3), pages 287-302.
    7. Wilson, Dennis P., 2005. "Additional law enforcement as a deterrent to criminal behavior: empirical evidence from the National Hockey League," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 319-330, May.
    8. Marceau, Nicolas & Mongrain, Steeve, 1999. "Dissuader le crime : un survol," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 75(1), pages 123-147, mars-juin.
    9. Isaac Ehrlich, 2010. "The Market Model of Crime: A Short Review and New Directions," Chapters, in: Bruce L. Benson & Paul R. Zimmerman (ed.), Handbook on the Economics of Crime, chapter 1, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    10. Ezra Friedman & Abraham L. Wickelgren, 2006. "Bayesian Juries and The Limits to Deterrence," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 22(1), pages 70-86, April.
    11. Fajnzylber, Pablo & Lederman, Daniel & Loayza, Norman, 2002. "What causes violent crime?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(7), pages 1323-1357, July.
    12. Wolfgang Maennig, 2004. "Korruption im internationalen Sport: ökonomische Analyse und Lösungsansätze," Vierteljahrshefte zur Wirtschaftsforschung / Quarterly Journal of Economic Research, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research, vol. 73(2), pages 263-291.
    13. Fernandez, Carmen & Ley, Eduardo & Steel, Mark F. J., 2001. "Benchmark priors for Bayesian model averaging," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 100(2), pages 381-427, February.
    14. Wolfgang Maennig, 2002. "On the Economics of Doping and Corruption in International Sports," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 3(1), pages 61-89, February.
    15. Marcel Boyer & Tracy R. Lewis & Wei Lin Liu, 2000. "Setting standards for credible compliance and law enforcement," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 33(2), pages 319-340, May.
    16. Paresh Kumar Narayan & Russell Smyth, 2006. "Dead man walking: an empirical reassessment of the deterrent effect of capital punishment using the bounds testing approach to cointegration," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(17), pages 1975-1989.
    17. Lucija Muehlenbachs & Stefan Staubli & Mark A. Cohen, 2016. "The Impact of Team Inspections on Enforcement and Deterrence," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 3(1), pages 159-204.
    18. Rafael Di Tella & Ernesto Schargrodsky, 2004. "Do Police Reduce Crime? Estimates Using the Allocation of Police Forces After a Terrorist Attack," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 115-133, March.
    19. Levitt, Steven D, 1997. "Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Estimate the Effect of Police on Crime," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(3), pages 270-290, June.
    20. Carneiro, Francisco Galrao & Loureiro, Paulo R.A. & Sachsida, Adolfo, 2005. "Crime and social interactions: a developing country case study," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 311-318, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    identity theft; deterrence; statutes;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K1 - Law and Economics - - Basic Areas of Law
    • K4 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:amerec:v:62:y:2017:i:2:p:217-221. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://journals.sagepub.com/home/aex .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.