IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/bofitp/bdp2008_030.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Optimal law enforcement and welfare in the presence of organized crime

Author

Listed:
  • Pääkkönen, Jenni

Abstract

This paper explores the optimal law enforcement strategy of a Leviathan government in the presence of organized crime. The government is considered too weak to prevent an upsurge in crime, so it allows the mafia to generate a positive payoff by extracting rents in the shadow economy. From a strategic standpoint, the government, if it has the possibility to monitor shadow production and fine offenders, may not want to shut down illegal production or kick out the mafia, but instead can use its policing activity to capture additional revenue through fines on illegal firm activities and an increased tax base when mafia-harassed firms return to the legal sector. The option of escaping into the shadow economy can benefit some firms, even when this utility is diluted by the presence of a mafia. Monitoring hurts both legal and illegal firms, while the government benefits.

Suggested Citation

  • Pääkkönen, Jenni, 2008. "Optimal law enforcement and welfare in the presence of organized crime," BOFIT Discussion Papers 30/2008, Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies (BOFIT).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:bofitp:bdp2008_030
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/212643/1/bofit-dp2008-030.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Abdala Mansour & Nicolas Marceau & Steeve Mongrain, 2006. "Gangs and Crime Deterrence," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 22(2), pages 315-339, October.
    3. Kopczuk, Wojciech, 2001. "Redistribution when avoidance behavior is heterogeneous," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 51-71, July.
    4. Koivu, Tuuli, 2008. "Has the Chinese economy become more sensitive to interest rates? : Studying credit demand in China," BOFIT Discussion Papers 1/2008, Bank of Finland, Institute for Economies in Transition.
    5. Weiss, Laurence, 1976. "The Desirability of Cheating Incentives and Randomness in the Optimal Income Tax," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(6), pages 1343-1352, December.
    6. Boadway, Robin & Keen, Michael, 1998. "Evasion and Time Consistency in the Taxation of Capital Income," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 39(2), pages 461-476, May.
    7. Frye, Timothy & Shleifer, Andrei, 1997. "The Invisible Hand and the Grabbing Hand," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(2), pages 354-358, May.
    8. Bowles, Roger & Garoupa, Nuno, 1997. "Casual police corruption and the economics of crime," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 75-87, March.
    9. Kugler, Maurice & Verdier, Thierry & Zenou, Yves, 2005. "Organized crime, corruption and punishment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(9-10), pages 1639-1663, September.
    10. Alexeev, Michael & Janeba, Eckhard & Osborne, Stefan, 2004. "Taxation and evasion in the presence of extortion by organized crime," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 375-387, September.
    11. Loayza, Norman V., 1996. "The economics of the informal sector: a simple model and some empirical evidence from Latin America," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 129-162, December.
    12. Baumol, William J., 1996. "Entrepreneurship: Productive, unproductive, and destructive," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 3-22, January.
    13. repec:zbw:bofitp:2008_001 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Benno Torgler, 2003. "Tax Morale in Transition Countries," Post-Communist Economies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(3), pages 357-381.
    15. Mehlum, Halvor & Moene, Karl & Torvik, Ragnar, 2003. "Predator or prey?: Parasitic enterprises in economic development," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 275-294, April.
    16. Alm, James, 1985. "The Welfare Cost of the Underground Economy," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 23(2), pages 243-263, April.
    17. Acemoglu, Daron, 1995. "Reward structures and the allocation of talent," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 17-33, January.
    18. Berkowitz, Daniel & Li, Wei, 2000. "Tax rights in transition economies: a tragedy of the commons?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 369-397, June.
    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. Utz Weitzel & Diemo Urbig & Sameeksha Desai & Mark Sanders & Zoltán J. Ács, 2015. "The good, the bad, and the talented: Entrepreneurial talent and selfish behavior," Chapters, in: Global Entrepreneurship, Institutions and Incentives, chapter 2, pages 24-41, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Keith Blackburn & Kyriakos C. Neanidis & Maria Paola Rana, 2017. "A theory of organized crime, corruption and economic growth," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 5(2), pages 227-245, October.
    3. Sanders, Mark & Weitzel, Utz, 2010. "The Allocation of Entrepreneurial Talent and Destructive Entrepreneurship," WIDER Working Paper Series 046, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    4. Kugler, Maurice & Verdier, Thierry & Zenou, Yves, 2005. "Organized crime, corruption and punishment," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(9-10), pages 1639-1663, September.
    5. Davidson, Carl & Martin, Lawrence & Wilson, John Douglas, 2007. "Efficient black markets?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(7-8), pages 1575-1590, August.
    6. Mark Sanders & Utz Weitzel, 2010. "The Allocation of Entrepreneurial Talent and Destructive Entrepreneurship," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2010-046, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    7. Nunn, Nathan, 2007. "Historical legacies: A model linking Africa's past to its current underdevelopment," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 157-175, May.
    8. Ethan Bueno De Mesquita & Catherine Hafer, 2008. "Public Protection Or Private Extortion?," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(1), pages 1-32, March.
    9. van der Weele Joël, 2012. "Beyond the State of Nature: Introducing Social Interactions in the Economic Model of Crime," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 8(2), pages 401-432, October.
    10. Halvor Mehlum & Kalle Moene & Ragnar Torvik, 2003. "Destructive Creativity," Nordic Journal of Political Economy, Nordic Journal of Political Economy, vol. 29, pages 77-84.
    11. Jiancai Pi & Pengqing Zhang, 2020. "Organized crime and wage inequality," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 67(3), pages 344-361, July.
    12. repec:pdn:wpaper:79 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Alexander Libman & Janis N. Kluge, 2017. "Sticks or Carrots? Comparing Effectiveness of Government Shadow Economy Policies in Russia," Working Papers 364, Leibniz Institut für Ost- und Südosteuropaforschung (Institute for East and Southeast European Studies).
    14. Kugler, Maurice & Verdier, Thierry & Zenou, Yves, 2004. "Organised crime, corruption and punishment," Discussion Paper Series In Economics And Econometrics 0407, Economics Division, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton.
    15. Celik, Gorkem & Sayan, Serdar, 2005. "To Give In or Not To Give In To Bribery? Setting the Optimal Fines for Violations of Rules when the Enforcers are Likely to Ask for Bribes," Microeconomics.ca working papers celik-05-08-03-12-50-26, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 06 Aug 2008.
    16. Iain W. Long, 2017. "The Storm Before the Calm? Adverse Effects of Tackling Organized Crime," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 85(5), pages 541-576, September.
    17. Ekaterina Vostroknutova, 2003. "Shadow Economy, Rent-Seeking Activities and the Perils of Reinforcement of the Rule of Law," William Davidson Institute Working Papers Series 2003-578, William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan.
    18. Aziz N. Berdiev & James W. Saunoris, 2018. "Corruption and Entrepreneurship: Cross‐Country Evidence from Formal and Informal Sectors," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 84(3), pages 831-848, January.
    19. Jan U. Auerbach, 2019. "Property rights enforcement with unverifiable incomes," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 68(3), pages 701-735, October.
    20. Shankha Chakraborty & Era Dabla-Norris, 2006. "Rent Seeking," IMF Staff Papers, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 53(1), pages 1-2.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    organized crime; shadow economy; taxation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H26 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Tax Evasion and Avoidance
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law

    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:zbw:bofitp:bdp2008_030. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bofitfi.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.