IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/0012.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Citizen Rights and the Cost of Law Enforcement

Author

Listed:
  • Melvin Reder

Abstract

There is an inherent tension between the idea that individuals have certain inalienable (natural) rights and the economist's postulate that the rate if utilization of anything whose production requires scarce resources must be limited by considerations of opportunity cost. Remarks about rights to life, liberty, health, justice and the like are readily inserted into political pronouncements, legislative preambles and court decisions, but they (should) cause economists to raise questions about costs and quantities. Unfortunately, neither in ordinary language nor in the jargon of moral philosophy can such ultimate desiderata as liberty and justice be related to costs or quantities. Hence in the first section we sketch a model of social choice in which the necessary relationships can be defined. In section II, we give instances where, despite protestations to the contrary, the Law Enforcement System (LES) has made de facto reductions of citizen rights (liberties) in order to increase the efficiency if law enforcement. The final section considers some of the normative implications suggested by the positive arguments of section II.

Suggested Citation

  • Melvin Reder, 1973. "Citizen Rights and the Cost of Law Enforcement," NBER Working Papers 0012, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:0012
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w0012.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alchian, Armen A & Demsetz, Harold, 1972. "Production , Information Costs, and Economic Organization," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(5), pages 777-795, December.
    2. 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.
    3. Harris, John R, 1970. "On the Economics of Law and Order," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 78(1), pages 165-174, Jan.-Feb..
    4. William M. Landes, 1974. "The Bail System: An Economic Approach," NBER Chapters, in: Essays in the Economics of Crime and Punishment, pages 135-163, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    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. Dendi Ramdani & Arjen Witteloostuijn, 2012. "The Shareholder–Manager Relationship and Its Impact on the Likelihood of Firm Bribery," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 108(4), pages 495-507, July.
    2. Imrohoroglu, Ayse & Merlo, Antonio & Rupert, Peter, 2000. "On the Political Economy of Income Redistribution and Crime," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 41(1), pages 1-25, February.
    3. Tim Friehe & Thomas J. Miceli, 2017. "On Punishment Severity and Crime Rates," American Law and Economics Review, American Law and Economics Association, vol. 19(2), pages 464-485.
    4. Lucas, David S. & Fuller, Caleb S. & Piano, Ennio E., 2018. "Rooking the state," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 12-20.
    5. 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.
    6. Matteo Rizzolli & Luca Stanca, 2012. "Judicial Errors and Crime Deterrence: Theory and Experimental Evidence," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(2), pages 311-338.
    7. Thomas J. Miceli & Kathleen Segerson, 2007. "Punishing the Innocent along with the Guilty: The Economics of Individual versus Group Punishment," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 36(1), pages 81-106, January.
    8. Benito Arruñada, 2003. "Specialization and rent-seeking in moral enforcement: The case of confession," Economics Working Papers 653, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, revised Jul 2009.
    9. Persson, Mats & Siven, Claes-Henric, 2006. "The Becker Paradox and Type I vs. Type II Errors in the Economics of Crime," Seminar Papers 741, Stockholm University, Institute for International Economic Studies.
    10. Casey B. Mulligan, 2021. "The Backward Art of Slowing the Spread? Congregation Efficiencies during COVID-19," NBER Working Papers 28737, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Kirstein, Roland, 2003. "Imperfect Monitoring of Monitoring Agents: One Reason Why Hierarchies Can Be Superior to "Lean" Organizations," CSLE Discussion Paper Series 2003-07, Saarland University, CSLE - Center for the Study of Law and Economics.
    12. Seeun Jung & Kenneth Houngbedji, 2014. "Shirking, Monitoring, and Risk Aversion," PSE Working Papers halshs-00965532, HAL.
    13. Roee Sarel, 2022. "Crime and punishment in times of pandemics," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 54(2), pages 155-186, October.
    14. Muehlenbachs, Lucija & Staubli, Stefan & Cohen, Mark A., 2013. "The Effect of Inspector Group Size and Familiarity on Enforcement and Deterrence," RFF Working Paper Series dp-13-36, Resources for the Future.
    15. Derek Johnson & Thomas J. Miceli, 2013. "Asset Forfeiture Laws and Criminal Deterrence," Working papers 2013-27, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    16. Di Tella, Rafael & Dubra, Juan, 2008. "Crime and punishment in the "American Dream"," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(7), pages 1564-1584, July.
    17. Thomas J. Miceli, 2022. "Of Coase, Cattle, and Crime: Why the Becker Model is Compatible with a Moral Theory of Criminal Law," Working papers 2022-05, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    18. Klaus Heine, 2013. "Inside the black box: incentive regulation and incentive channeling on energy markets," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 17(1), pages 157-186, February.
    19. Dietl Helmut M & Duschl Tobias & Lang Markus, 2011. "Executive Pay Regulation: What Regulators, Shareholders, and Managers Can Learn from Major Sports Leagues," Business and Politics, De Gruyter, vol. 13(2), pages 1-32, August.
    20. Elzas, B.D., 1998. "'The Nature of the Firm' after sixty years," Serie Research Memoranda 0032, VU University Amsterdam, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Econometrics.

    More about this item

    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:nbr:nberwo:0012. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    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.