IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v115y2012i3p455-459.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Crime and moral hazard: Does more policing necessarily induce private negligence?

Author

Listed:
  • Guha, Brishti
  • Guha, Ashok S.

Abstract

Even risk-neutral individuals can insure themselves against crimes by combining direct expenditure on security with costly diversification. In such cases — and even when one of these options is infeasible — greater policing often actually encourages private precautions.

Suggested Citation

  • Guha, Brishti & Guha, Ashok S., 2012. "Crime and moral hazard: Does more policing necessarily induce private negligence?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 115(3), pages 455-459.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:115:y:2012:i:3:p:455-459
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2011.12.105
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176511006288
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econlet.2011.12.105?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Peter T. Leeson, 2007. "Trading with Bandits," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 50(2), pages 303-321.
    2. Gary S. Becker, 1974. "Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach," NBER Chapters, in: Essays in the Economics of Crime and Punishment, pages 1-54, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Ben-Shahar, Omri & Harel, Alon, 1995. "Blaming the Victim: Optimal Incentives for Private Precautions against Crime," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 11(2), pages 434-455, October.
    4. Lacroix Guy & Narceau Nicolas, 1995. "Private Protection against Crime," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 72-87, January.
    5. Shavell, Steven, 1991. "Individual precautions to prevent theft: Private versus socially optimal behavior," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 123-132, September.
    6. Keith N. Hylton, 1996. "Optimal Law Enforcement and Victim Precaution," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 27(1), pages 197-206, Spring.
    7. Lin, Ming-Jen, 2009. "More police, less crime: Evidence from US state data," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 73-80, June.
    8. Stergios Skaperdas, 2001. "The political economy of organized crime: providing protection when the state does not," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 2(3), pages 173-202, November.
    9. William P. Jennings, Jr., 1984. "A Note on the Economics of Organized Crime," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 315-321, Jul-Sep.
    10. Garoupa, Nuno, 2000. "The Economics of Organized Crime and Optimal Law Enforcement," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 38(2), pages 278-288, April.
    11. Clements, Matthew T., 2003. "Precautionary incentives for privately informed victims," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 23(3), pages 237-251, September.
    12. Dick, Andrew R., 1995. "When does organized crime pay? A transaction cost analysis," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 25-45, January.
    13. Ehrlich, Isaac, 1981. "On the Usefulness of Controlling Individuals: An Economic Analysis of Rehabilitation, Incapacitation, and Deterrence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 307-322, June.
    14. Miceli, Thomas J., 2010. "A model of criminal sanctions that incorporate both deterrence and incapacitation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 107(2), pages 205-207, May.
    15. Levitt, Steven D, 1997. "Using Electoral Cycles in Police Hiring to Estimate the Effect of Police on Crime," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(3), pages 270-290, June.
    16. Friedman, Joseph & Hakim, Simon & Spiegel, Uriel, 1987. "The effects of community size on the mix of private and public use of security services," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 230-241, September.
    17. Cameron, Samuel, 1988. "The Economics of Crime Deterrence: A Survey of Theory and Evidence," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(2), pages 301-323.
    18. Peltzman, Sam, 1975. "The Effects of Automobile Safety Regulation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 83(4), pages 677-725, August.
    19. Juin-Jen Chang & Huei-Chung Lu & Mingshen Chen, 2005. "Organized Crime or Individual Crime? Endogenous Size of a Criminal Organization and the Optimal Law Enforcement," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 43(3), pages 661-675, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Eberhard Feess, 2015. "On the interplay of public and private law enforcement with multiple victims," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 39(1), pages 79-95, February.
    2. Brishti Guha, 2015. "“Inferiority” complex? Policing, private precautions and crime," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 39(1), pages 97-106, February.
    3. Guha, Brishti, 2013. "Guns and crime revisited," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 1-10.
    4. Aaron Chalfin & Benjamin Hansen & Rachel Ryley, 2019. "The Minimum Legal Drinking Age and Crime Victimization," NBER Working Papers 26051, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Konrad Grabiszewski & Alex Horenstein, 2017. "Product-Consumer Substitution and Safety Regulation," Working Papers 2017-01, University of Miami, Department of Economics.
    6. Konrad Grabiszewski & Alex Horenstein & Nicolo Bates, 2016. "Product-Consumer Substitution and Safety Regulation: Theory and Evidence from Simulation," Working Papers 2016-05, University of Miami, Department of Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Brishti Guha, 2015. "“Inferiority” complex? Policing, private precautions and crime," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 39(1), pages 97-106, February.
    2. Guha, Brishti, 2013. "Guns and crime revisited," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 1-10.
    3. Guha, Brishti, 2012. "Pirates and fishermen: Is less patrolling always bad?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 29-38.
    4. Nuno Garoupa & Jonathan Klick & Francesco Parisi, 2006. "A law and economics perspective on terrorism," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 128(1), pages 147-168, July.
    5. Peter T. Leeson & David B. Skarbek, 2010. "Criminal constitutions," Global Crime, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(3), pages 279-297, August.
    6. David Skarbek, 2010. "Putting the "Con" into Constitutions: The Economics of Prison Gangs," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 26(2), pages 183-211.
    7. Eberhard Feess, 2015. "On the interplay of public and private law enforcement with multiple victims," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 39(1), pages 79-95, February.
    8. Guha, Brishti & Guha, Ashok S., 2011. "Pirates and traders: Some economics of pirate-infested seas," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 111(2), pages 147-150, May.
    9. Antony W. Dnes & Nuno Garoupa, 2010. "Behavior, Human Capital and the Formation of Gangs," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(4), pages 517-529, November.
    10. Norgaard, Julia R. & Walbert, Harold J. & Hardy, R. August, 2018. "Shadow markets and hierarchies: comparing and modeling networks in the Dark Net," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 14(5), pages 877-899, October.
    11. Leeson,Peter T., 2014. "Anarchy Unbound," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107025806.
    12. Leeson, Peter T., 2010. "Pirational choice: The economics of infamous pirate practices," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 76(3), pages 497-510, December.
    13. Ian Ayres & Steven D. Levitt, 1998. "Measuring Positive Externalities from Unobservable Victim Precaution: An Empirical Analysis of Lojack," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 113(1), pages 43-77.
    14. Skarbek, David, 2012. "Prison gangs, norms, and organizations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 96-109.
    15. DeAngelo, Gregory, 2012. "Making space for crime: A spatial analysis of criminal competition," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1-2), pages 42-51.
    16. Iain W. Long, 2017. "The Storm Before the Calm? Adverse Effects of Tackling Organized Crime," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 85(5), pages 541-576, September.
    17. Long, Iain W., 2013. "Recruitment to Organised Crime," Cardiff Economics Working Papers E2013/10, Cardiff University, Cardiff Business School, Economics Section.
    18. Zimmerman, Paul R., 2010. "Deterrence from self-protection measures in the ‘market model’ of crime: dynamic panel data estimates from employment in private security occupations," MPRA Paper 26187, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Steven D. Levitt, 1998. "Juvenile Crime and Punishment," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 106(6), pages 1156-1185, December.
    20. Isaac Ehrlich, 1996. "Crime, Punishment, and the Market for Offenses," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 10(1), pages 43-67, Winter.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Crime; Policing; Private precautions; Moral hazard; Diversification;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • K4 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior
    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:115:y:2012:i:3:p:455-459. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.