Criminal Solicitation, Entrapment, and the Enforcement of Law

This paper examines the optimal use of criminal solicitation as a law enforcement strategy. The benefits are greater deterrence of crime (due to the greater likelihood of apprehension), and the savings in social harm as some offenders are diverted away from committing actual crimes through solicitation. The costs are the expense of hiring undercover cops and the greater likelihood of punishment. The optimal use of solicitation balances these factors. The paper also examines the justification for the entrapment defense, which exonerates those caught in a criminal solicitation but who otherwise had no predisposition to commit a crime.

Bilateral Accidents with Intrinsically Interdependent Costs of Precaution

The standard economic model of bilateral precaution postulates an interdependency between the care taken by injurers and victims that operates through the effects of each on the expected accident loss. This paper considers situations in which each party's precaution affects not only expected accident loss, but also directly affects the other party's cost of taking precaution. Generalizing the economic model of tort law in this way allows for a more complete analysis of when standard tort rules can and cannot induce optimal precaution. When this additional externality is introduced into a model of unilateral harm (where all accident losses are borne by the victim), none of the standard tort liability rules induces socially optimal behavior by both parties. Moreover, under a contributory negligence rule, the only equilibrium is in mixed strategies; this gives rise to the possibility of litigation in equilibrium. A 'tort-like' liability rule that induces socially optimal behavior by both parties is then characterized; this involves a payment by victims to non-negligent injurers whenever an accident occurs. The model is then extended to consider the case of bilateral harm (where both parties suffer accident losses). It is shown that, as long as both parties can sue to recover their accident losses, all negligence-based tort rules lead to socially optimal behavior by both parties.

Criminal Solicitation, Entrapment, and the Enforcement of Law

This paper examines the optimal use of criminal solicitation as a law enforcement strategy. The benefits are greater deterrence of crime (due to the greater likelihood of apprehension), and the savings in social harm and apprehension costs as some offenders are diverted away from committing actual crimes through solicitation. The costs are the expense of hiring undercover cops and the greater likelihood of punishment. The optimal use of solicitation balances these factors. The paper also examines the justification for, and impact of, the entrapment defense, which exonerates those caught in a solicitation but otherwise not predisposed to commit a crime.

Property Law

This chapter examines the economics of property rights and property law. Property law is a fundamental part of social organization and is also fundamental to the operation of the economy because it defines and protects the bundle of rights that constitute property. Property law thereby creates incentives to protect and invest in assets and establishes a legal framework within which market exchange of assets can take place. The purpose of this chapter is to show how the economics of property rights can be used to understand fundamental features of property law and related extra-legal institutions. The chapter will both examine the rationale for legal doctrine and the effects of legal doctrine regarding the exercise, enforcement, and transfer of rights. It will also examine various property rights regimes including open access, private ownership, common property and state property. The guiding questions are: How are property rights established? What explains the variation in the types of property rights? What governs the use and transfer of rights? And, how are property rights enforced?