The Optimal Use Of Fines And Imprisonment If Governments Don't Maximize Welfare
The Optimal Use Of Fines And Imprisonment If Governments Don't Maximize Welfare
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如果政府不实现福利最大化，罚款和监禁的最佳使用
DOI：
10.1111/j.1467-9779.2006.00283.x
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发表时间：
2006
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Ingolf Dittmann
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Ingolf Dittmann
我们考虑了一个程式化的犯罪和惩罚模型，其中的起诉政策是由三个变量定义的：惩罚的大小，惩罚的类型和检测概率。我们推导出最佳类型的惩罚的假设下，检测概率是由一个政府官员，其目标函数的地方政府的预算比社会福利函数的权重更高。我们表明，对于严重的罪行，完全监禁是福利最大化。如果考虑到监禁的费用，最佳惩罚是监禁加罚款，罚款数额小于或等于监禁的费用。对于不太严重的罪行，罚款而不监禁是福利最大化。因此，本文论证了在存在代理冲突的情况下，应当在可行的情况下使用罚款的文献的标准结果不一定成立。此外，它为严重犯罪广泛使用强制监禁提供了新的经济解释。
We consider a stylized model of crime and punishment in which the prosecution policy is defined by three variables: the size of punishment, the type of punishment and the detection probability. We derive the optimal type of punishment under the assumption that the detection probability is chosen by a government official whose objective function places a higher weight on the government's budget than the social welfare function does. We show that for serious crimes exclusive imprisonment is welfare maximizing. If costs of imprisonment are taken into account, the optimal punishment is a prison term with an additional fine that is smaller or equal to the costs of the prison term. For less serious crimes, fines without imprisonment are welfare maximizing. Therefore, this paper demonstrates that the standard result of the literature that fines should be used whenever feasible need not hold in the presence of agency conflicts. Moreover, it offers a new economic explanation for the wide-spread use of mandatory imprisonment for serious crimes.