IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/udb/wpaper/uwec-2008-01.html

The Evolution of Criminal Law and Police

Author

Listed:
  • Douglas W. Allen

    (Simon Fraser University)

  • Yoram Barzel

    (University of Washington)

Abstract

Increased standardization of goods was a by-product of the technical innovations triggering the Industrial Revolution. A side effect of standardization was the new abilities it allowed for theft and embezzlement. Two significant modern institutions radically evolved during the 18th to mid 19th centuries to control these costs: criminal law and public police. These institutions strongly interacted with the pace of the Industrial Revolution. Our argument explains this evolution, and helps to explain several historical facts: the role of early police; the fall of the watch system; the removal of possession immunity; the rise and fall of factory colonies; the fall and rise of court cases during the 18th century; and the delay of per capita income in response to technical innovations in the Industrial Revolution.

Suggested Citation

  • Douglas W. Allen & Yoram Barzel, 2007. "The Evolution of Criminal Law and Police," Working Papers UWEC-2008-01, University of Washington, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:udb:wpaper:uwec-2008-01
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ.washington.edu/user/yoramb/standard.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. N. F. R. Crafts & C. K. Harley, 1992. "Output growth and the British industrial revolution: a restatement of the Crafts-Harley view," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 45(4), pages 703-730, November.
    2. Lindsay, Jean, 1960. "An Early Industrial Community – The Evans' Cotton Mill at Darley Abbey Derbyshire, 1783–1810," Business History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 34(3), pages 277-301, October.
    3. repec:uct:uconnp:1996-04 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Gary S. Becker & George J. Stigler, 1974. "Law Enforcement, Malfeasance, and Compensation of Enforcers," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 3(1), pages 1-18, January.
    5. Yoram Barzel, 2004. "Standards and the Form of Agreement," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 42(1), pages 1-13, January.
    6. Howe, Anthony, 1984. "The Cotton Masters 1830-1860," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198218944.
    7. Douglass C. North, 1968. "Sources of Productivity Change in Ocean Shipping, 1600-1850," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 76(5), pages 953-953.
    8. Huberman,Michael, 2010. "Escape from the Market," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521142663, Enero-Abr.
    9. Szostak, Rick, 1989. "The organization of work : The emergence of the factory revisited," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 343-358, May.
    10. Jones, S. R. H., 1982. "The organization of work : A historical dimension," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 3(2-3), pages 117-137.
    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. Allen, Douglas W., 2009. "A theory of the pre-modern British aristocracy," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 46(3), pages 299-313, July.

    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. Squicciarini, Mara & Juhász, Réka & Voigtländer, Nico, 2020. "Technology Adoption and Productivity Growth: Evidence from Industrialization in France," CEPR Discussion Papers 14970, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Geraghty, Thomas M., 2007. "The factory system in the British industrial revolution: A complementarity thesis," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(6), pages 1329-1350, August.
    3. Richard E. Baldwin & Philippe Martin & Gianmarco I. P. Ottaviano, 2021. "Global Income Divergence, Trade, and Industrialization: The Geography of Growth Take-Offs," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Firms and Workers in a Globalized World Larger Markets, Tougher Competition, chapter 2, pages 25-57, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    4. Broadberry, Stephen & Ghosal, Sayantan & Proto, Eugenio, 2017. "Anonymity, efficiency wages and technological progress," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 379-394.
    5. Mokyr, Joel, 2001. "The rise and fall of the factory system: technology, firms, and households since the industrial revolution," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 1-45, December.
    6. Kelly, Morgan & Gráda, Cormac Ó & Solar, Peter, 2019. "Safety at Sea during the Industrial Revolution," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 439, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    7. Joan Ramon Rosés, 2003. "Regional industrialisation without national growth: The Catalan industrialization and the growth of Spanish economy (1830-1861)," Economics Working Papers 716, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    8. Klaus Desmet & Stephen Parente, 2012. "The evolution of markets and the revolution of industry: a unified theory of growth," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 17(3), pages 205-234, September.
    9. McCloskey, Deirdre Nansen, 2009. "Britain, China, and the Irrelevance of Stage Theories," MPRA Paper 18291, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Réka Juhász & Mara P. Squicciarini & Nico Voigtländer, 2020. "Away from Home and Back: Coordinating (Remote) Workers in 1800 and 2020," NBER Working Papers 28251, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Toms, Steven & Shepherd, Alice, 2017. "Accounting and social conflict: Profit and regulated working time in the British Industrial Revolution," CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACCOUNTING, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 57-75.
    12. Kelly, Morgan & Ó Gráda, Cormac & Solar, Peter M., 2021. "Safety at Sea during the Industrial Revolution," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 81(1), pages 239-275, March.
    13. Antonio Acconcia & Marcello D'Amato & Riccardo Martina, 2003. "Corruption and Tax Evasion with Competitive Bribes," CSEF Working Papers 112, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    14. Jeremy T. Fox, 2010. "Estimating the Employer Switching Costs and Wage Responses of Forward-Looking Engineers," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 28(2), pages 357-412, April.
    15. Michael Waldman, 1990. "A Signalling Explanation for Seniority Based Promotions and Other Labor Market Puzzles," UCLA Economics Working Papers 599, UCLA Department of Economics.
    16. Jaume Ventura & Hans-Joachim Voth, 2015. "Debt into growth: How sovereign debt accelerated the first Industrial Revolution," Economics Working Papers 1483, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    17. Alessandro Marra & Alessandro Sarra, 2010. "Incomplete antitrust laws and private actions for damages," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 30(2), pages 111-135, October.
    18. Galletta, Sergio, 2017. "Law enforcement, municipal budgets and spillover effects: Evidence from a quasi-experiment in Italy," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 90-105.
    19. Shijie Lu & Xin (Shane) Wang & Neil Bendle, 2020. "Does Piracy Create Online Word of Mouth? An Empirical Analysis in the Movie Industry," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(5), pages 2140-2162, May.
    20. Stephan Heblich & Stephen J Redding & Daniel M Sturm, 2020. "The Making of the Modern Metropolis: Evidence from London," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 135(4), pages 2059-2133.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:udb:wpaper:uwec-2008-01. 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: Michael Goldblatt (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deuwaus.html .

    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.