The problem of optimal public enforcement of law is
examined in a model in which two types of enforcement effort are
distinguished: specific enforcement effort, activity devoted to
apprehending and penalizing individuals who have committed a
single type of harmful act; and general enforcement effort,
activity affecting the likelihood of apprehension of individuals
who have committed any of a range of harmful acts. (A policeman
on the beat, for instance, is able to apprehend many types of
violators of law.) If all enforcement effort is specific, then
under wide assumptions it is optimal for sanctions to be extreme
for all acts. However, if all enforcement effort is general,
optimal sanctions are low for acts of small harmfulness, increase
with the degree of harmfulness, and reach the extreme only for
the most harmful acts (the main result of the paper). Also
considered is the assumption that enforcement effort may be both
general and specific.
*Published:
Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 99, no. 5 (1991): 1088-1108.
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