Crime and Punishment, An Economic Approach¶
Becker, G. S. (1968). Crime and Punishment, An Economic Approach: An Economic Approach. Journal of Political Economy, 76(2), 169-217.
Cited by¶
5 citations across 5 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Continuity
- In policy and regulatory design, continuous penalty schedules avoid the cliff-edge gaming behavior of discrete tier systems (a continuous fine schedule rising smoothly with violation severity dominates a step-function tier system on both fairness and incentive grounds, in line with the rational-actor analysis of Becker (1968))
This sourceFoundational rational-actor analysis of optimal penalty design; establishes the framework in which marginal incentives derived from penalty schedules align with marginal social harm, providing the economic basis for replacing tier-based regulatory systems with smooth proportionality.
- In policy and regulatory design, continuous penalty schedules avoid the cliff-edge gaming behavior of discrete tier systems (a continuous fine schedule rising smoothly with violation severity dominates a step-function tier system on both fairness and incentive grounds, in line with the rational-actor analysis of Becker (1968))
- Incentive
- In law and regulation it is criminal penalties as deterrents, civil damages internalising harm, whistleblower bounties, and pollution-trading rights.
This sourcePenalties as deterrents working through the expected-payoff calculus (detection probability times sanction), the framework behind fine-and-detection design for illegal dumping.
- In law and regulation it is criminal penalties as deterrents, civil damages internalising harm, whistleblower bounties, and pollution-trading rights.
Domain-specific¶
Mechanisms¶
- Audit and Penalty System
- Framed as a gamble the participant faces, it makes the deterrence explicit — the expected cost of cheating simply has to exceed the expected gain.
This sourceModels offending as a choice under uncertainty that can be deterred by changing the probability and severity of punishment.
- Framed as a gamble the participant faces, it makes the deterrence explicit — the expected cost of cheating simply has to exceed the expected gain.
- Stochastic Challenge or Audit Timing
- … strength is manufacturing ambient deterrence cheaply: by keeping the perceived probability of a check above the exploitability threshold everywhere, it discourages evasion across a whole stream without the cost of inspecting everything, and without the fixed cycle that hands evaders a schedule to route around.
This sourceModels deterrence as increasing with the probability of conviction while recognizing the enforcement cost of raising that probability.
- … strength is manufacturing ambient deterrence cheaply: by keeping the perceived probability of a check above the exploitability threshold everywhere, it discourages evasion across a whole stream without the cost of inspecting everything, and without the fixed cycle that hands evaders a schedule to route around.
Verification¶
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Links previously used in the corpus¶
Before the registry existed this work was also linked 2 other ways.
- https://laws21.classes.ryansafner.com/readings/Becker-1968.pdf ×1
- https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/259394 ×1
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