The optimal use of fines and imprisonment

This paper examines the use of fines and imprisonment to deter individuals from engaging in harmful activities. These sanctions are analyzed separately as well as together, first for identical risk-neutral individuals and then for two groups of risk-neutral individuals who differ by wealth. When fines are used alone and individuals are identical, the optimal fine and probability of apprehension are such that there is some ‘underdeterrence’. If individuals differ by wealth, then the optimal fine for the high wealth group exceeds the fine for the low wealth group. When imprisonment is used alone and individuals are identical, the optimal imprisonment term and probability may be such that there is either underdeterrence or overdeterrence. If individuals differ by wealth, the optimal imprisonment term for the high wealth group may be longer or shorter than the term for the low wealth group. When fines and imprisonment are used together, it is desirable to use the fine to its maximum feasible extent before possibly supplementing it with an imprisonment term. The effects of risk aversion of these results are also discussed.     

TIME, MONEY, AND OPTIMAL CRIMINAL PENALTIES

The economic approach to optimal criminal penalties measures the welfare effects of crime and punishment in dollar terms, ignoring differences in the marginal utility of money among people. This paper alternatively proposes using time as the unit of measure in determining optimal criminal penalties, measuring the costs and benefits of crime in hours or days instead of dollars. The policy implications differ substantially from those in the existing economic literature. Equal prison terms impose similar time costs on all individuals rather than being more costly for those with higher foregone earnings. Equal fines impose the same cost on all individuals in the dollar-based economic models but in a time-denominated system are costlier to those who require more time to earn the money to pay the fines. In principle, one can use either money or time in setting penalties. However, time-based penalties are more consistent with the fundamental and widely held principles of justice on which the U.S. legal system rests.     

The optimal use of fines and imprisonment when wealth is unobservable

This article studies the optimal use of fines and imprisonment when an offender's level of wealth cannot be observed by the enforcement authority. I employ a model in which there are two types of offenders—a low-wealth type and a high-wealth type. The consequence of the unobservability of wealth depends on whether the enforcement authority would employ fines alone, or would also impose imprisonment sentences, if wealth were observable. In the former case, the inability to observe wealth lowers social welfare. But in the latter case, the unobservability of wealth does not lower social welfare. In both cases, offering offenders a choice of sanctions can induce high-wealth offenders to pay higher fines even though their wealth is unobservable. Specifically, a relatively high imprisonment sentence must accompany the payment of a low fine, so that high-wealth offenders will prefer to pay a higher fine and bear a lower (possibly no) imprisonment sentence.     

TIMING OF LUMPY INVESTMENT,PRICING AND TECHNICAL PROGRESS

In equipment‐intensive sectors – such as water utilities, power generation, and gas – billions of dollars are spent in capital equipment. The nature of the investment is often lumpy: at some point a plant has to be replaced and a large investment is required. We characterize the dynamic optimal investment policy of profit‐maximizing and welfare‐maximizing firms. We first show that, when there is no technical progress, the duration of the plant is longer for a profit‐maximizing firm. We then consider technical progress leading to either capacity expansion or to operating costs reduction. We show that duration tends to increase when the installed capacity increases over time, while it tends to decrease when technical progress reduces operating costs, both for profit‐maximizing and welfare‐maximizing firms. Under some conditions, when capacity expands over time the duration of the plant is longer for a profit‐maximizing firm than for a welfare‐maximizing firm.     

Optimal public policy with endogenous mortality

We analyze the welfare‐maximizing policy mix between explicit and implicit taxation, where the probability of survival of the young agents depends upon the share of government expenditure on health, education and infrastructure. We show that increases in the survival probability lead to an increase in the reliance on seigniorage as a welfare maximizing outcome. However, the seigniorage tax base must be large enough for the benevolent planner to use the inflation tax.     

Optimal disaster-preventive expenditure in a dynamic and stochastic model

The purpose of this study is to present an analytical framework for publicly optimal disaster-preventive expenditure. We examine the optimal policy combination of tax rate, disaster-preventive expenditure, and productive government expenditure in a neoclassical growth model, in which natural disasters occur stochastically and partially destroy existing capital. Based on this model, we can decompose the welfare effect of raising preventive expenditure into three effects: the damage reduction, crowding out, and precautionary effects. By identifying these marginal benefits and costs, we obtain the policy conditions that maximize household welfare. Furthermore, we show that optimal prevention is increasing in disaster probability, and by using a numerical example, we show that there is an inverse U-shaped relationship between the expected growth rate and disaster probability.     

Legal Principles in Antitrust Enforcement

We study antitrust enforcement that aims to channel price‐fixing incentives of cartels through setting fine schedules and detection levels. Fines obey legal principles, such as the punishment should fit the crime, proportionality, bankruptcy considerations, and minimum fines. Bankruptcy considerations limit maximum fines, ensure abnormal cartel profits, and impose a challenge for optimal antitrust enforcement. We derive the fine schedule and detection level that are constrained‐optimal under legal principles and sustainability of cartel prices. This fine schedule lies below the maximum fine, makes collusion on lower prices more attractive than on higher prices, and, hence, relates to the body of literature on marginal deterrence.     

Growth and Welfare Effects of Tax Cuts: The Case of a Productive Public Input with Technological Risk

This paper analyzes the dynamic impact of tax cuts within a stochastic model of endogenous growth with a congested public input. A decreasing taxation of deterministic income parts leads to the well-known positive growth effect. Nevertheless, due to the insurance effect associated with the taxation of stochastic income flows, the overall growth impact of taxation is ambiguous. It is shown that the optimal structure of financing government expenditure does not only depend on the degree of rivalry but also on the degree of risk aversion. The optimal real value of government debt decreases with a rise in congestion. We identify that in the case of proportional congestion, the base for tax cuts should be the growth neutral consumption tax. Maximizing the growth rate does not automatically coincide with maximizing welfare. Hence, the base for tax cuts gains importance to realize a welfare optimal policy.     

Optimal Fines under Announced and Surprise Inspections

This paper examines optimal fines in a regulatory framework where the regulator can choose either surprise or announced inspections to monitor a firm for compliance. The firm can invest in detection avoidance, but it receives a fine if the regulator discovers that it is noncompliant. In the welfare maximization problem, we focus on the trade‐off between the frequency of inspections and the magnitude of the fine. We find that when inspections are unannounced, the optimal fine is maximal, but when they are announced, the optimal fine may be less than maximal.     

进入管制与产品质量

本文分析了政府进入管制对厂商最优质量水平及市场平均质量水平的影响。在模型中 ,消费者对产品质量的主观推断存在误差 ,而产品需求在短期内保持稳定。财政收入最大化政府设置行政性进入壁垒并对非法进入者进行惩罚。因而 ,非法进入者虽然可以以冒牌的方式进入行业或市场 ,但有面临被处罚的可能性。分析结果表明 ,政府一定有动力实施管制 ,且将查处的力度确定如此水平 ,使得冒牌厂商“打而不死” ;此时 ,市场平均质量水平则低于或等于无管制情形。本文的分析还表明 ,在位厂商和非法进入者的均衡质量水平均与管制力度呈负相关关系。     

Social welfare loss due to second-best pricing: an application to the Portuguese telecommunications

The telecommunications industry is usually characterized by low marginal costs and significant fixed costs which are the conditions for the inefficiency of marginal cost pricing. In such cases theory postulates that optimal pricing is obtained by maximizing welfare subject to a restriction of viability of the firm: the second-best pricing scheme. The possible welfare losses due to second-best pricing varies according to the values of marginal costs, prices and demand elasticities. This paper analyses to what extent the second-best pricing has been achieved in the Portuguese telecommunications firm CTT, over the period 1950#150;1984 as well as the magnitude of the price-cost margins and welfare losses created. We obtained empirical evidence of the presence of economies of scale, a welfare loss estimate of 1% of the telecommunications receipts and a result that price was 40% greater than marginal cost. We concluded that price regulation and public ownership of the firm did not seriously affect social welfare over the sample period (it should be noted that it is the non-digital and fixedwire infrastructure period). Therefore, it is important to study the impact of new digital and non-wire technologies and new services provided in the old regulatory scenery.     

A variable-production generalisation of Lerner's theorem

A government wishes to choose an optimal set of wage rates, but it is uncertain of individual characteristics. All it knows for certain is that each utility function is strictly quasi-concave and that the production function is linear. We assume that it can determine probability distributions, for each individual. of possible utility functions and ability levels. If each of these probability distributions is the same for every individual, expected social welfare is maximised by equalisation of wage rates. But since actual utility functions, and therefore labour supplies, will generally be unequal, incomes will then be unequal.     

如何最优地"放权"——行政事项集权与分权的最优边界

"简政放权、放管结合"是深化行政体制改革、转变政府职能的重要内容之一."放权"政策体现了政府的权力分配模式从集权向分权的转变,其本质是一种"行政性分权".文章从提高经济运行效率即最大化中央政府效用的视角,以建模方式——建立了一个三层次政府的动态博弈模型,给出了集权与分权的边界,揭示"放权"政策的逻辑,从而试图为研究政府最优行政分权提供一种可行的思路,并尝试用这一模型为"放权"政策提供合理的解释.模型分析结果表明,(1)分权能够在不改变社会福利水平的情况下,通过减少中央政府的信息成本负担提升了经济运行的效率,这也是"放权"政策的主要目的.同时,权力的下放可能导致下级政府"寻租"的隐患,需要加大对这一行为的惩罚力度."权力清单"制度的建立,通过明确规定中间政府的权力范围,加强了对中间政府行使权力的监督,减弱了其滥用权力的动机.(2)具有以下特征的权力,分权往往比集权更优:下级政府的成本负担轻、连带惩罚力度小;权力实施时底层政府追求的目标差异程度小、彼此之间相互影响程度小.与历次国发文中下放的权力做了比对后发现,这些被下放的权力能够用上述的特征进行较好的解释.(3)各因素影响分权最优性的强弱关系是:信息成本和对中间政府滥用权力的惩罚力度这两个因素强于权力本身的若干特征,即带给下级政府的成本负担、连带惩罚程度;政策实施时底层政府追求的目标差异程度、外部性大小.     

One size may not fit all: Welfare benefits and cost reductions with optional differentiated household electricity rates

We consider optional time-of-use (TOU) pricing for residential consumers, offered by a publicly regulated electricity supplier, as an alternative to a single TOU or flat rate structure. An equilibrium model explores and quantifies the effects of such pricing on welfare, consumption, and production costs. The supplier offers to each household a menu of possible rate structures obtained by maximizing a collective welfare function subject to three restrictions: Pareto efficiency, incentive compatibility, sufficiency of supplier revenue to cover costs. Simulations based on realistic calibration of the model demonstrate that optional pricing can increase overall consumer welfare and reduce average cost.     

Expropriation risk,investment decisions and economic sectors

We build a Real Options model to assess the importance of private provision and the impact of expropriation risk on investment timing, business values, governmental costs and social welfare. We consider two types of businesses (essential and non-essential) and two stages (operating businesses and investment opportunities) and answer questions regarding three main topics: the firm's reaction to expropriation risk, the government drivers to expropriate, and the welfare costs of expropriation. Our results show that responding to expropriation risk the private investor is driven to suboptimal investment decisions. When we endogenize the reputational costs of expropriation, our results show that the decision of the government to expropriate largely depends on the type of business being targeted. In terms of welfare, our results show that expropriation is always associated with a loss.     

Capital and Consumption Tax Reforms in a Small Open Economy

The effects of a reform in capital and consumption taxes on private welfare and government tax revenue are examined for a small open, capital‐importing economy. A trade‐off between private welfare and tax revenue is encountered in maximizing social welfare. Nonetheless, lowering capital taxes and raising consumption taxes can increase both private welfare and tax revenue if the initial tax rates are not optimal. In addition, a tax reform by this fashion is a likely response to a rise in the foreign rate of return on capital.     

Greenhouse Gas Abatement Cost Curves of the Residential Heating Market: A Microeconomic Approach

In this paper, we develop a microeconomic approach to deduce greenhouse gas abatement cost curves of the residential heating sector. Our research is based on a system dynamics microsimulation of private households’ investment decisions for heating systems to the year 2030. By accounting for household-specific characteristics, we investigate the welfare costs of different abatement policies in terms of the compensating variation and the excess burden. We investigate two policies: (i) a carbon tax and (ii) subsidies on heating system investments. We deduce abatement cost curves for both policies by simulating welfare costs and greenhouse gas emissions to the year 2030. We find that (i) welfare-based abatement costs are generally higher than pure technical equipment costs; (ii) given utility maximizing households a carbon tax is the most welfare-efficient policy and; (iii) if households are not utility maximizing, a subsidy on investments may have lower marginal greenhouse gas abatement costs than a carbon tax.     

Does Precommitment Raise Growth? The Dynamics of Growth and Fiscal Policy

We develop an endogenous growth model driven by externalities from both private and public capital. The government levies distortionary taxation to finance a publicly provided consumption good and public infrastructure. Firms face adjustment costs. We compare the optimal and time-consistent policies in a linear-quadratic approximation of the model. Although the time-consistent equilibrium is sub-optimal in terms of ex-ante intertemporal welfare, it yields higher long-run growth and welfare, through an accumulation of assets by the state and a cut in government consumption.     

Defense planning and fiscal strategy

In this article, we consider the optimal fiscal strategy of a government interested in maximizing expected social welfare in the face of a potential future security threat. While the common wisdom is that countries facing security threats should seek to bolster their fiscal position in order to ‘save for a rainy day’, we find that the optimization of expected social welfare may require governments to run ‘precautionary’ fiscal deficits.     

Performance Standards and Incentive Pay in Agency Contracts

When the presence of limited liability restricts a principal from imposing monetary fines on an agent in case of poor performance, the principal might use other kinds of punishment threats to deter the agent from shirking. We show that under the optimal contract in this case, the principal sets a performance standard and punishes the agent if the standard is not met, but rewards the agent on a profit-sharing basis if the standard is significantly exceeded. The optimal choice of performance standards for such contracts is discussed. It is shown that punishment threats, although inefficient, often help the principal to discipline the agent.
JEL classification : D 82