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Dynamic Economic Models of Optimal Law Enforcement

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Modelling and Decisions in Economics

Abstract

Since Becker’s (1968) seminal work on crime and punishment economists see a task in the optimal allocation of resources to reduce illegal behaviour. In some follow-up studies Becker’s approach, which is essentially static, has been extended by including intertemporal aspects. It turns out that efficient law enforcement in a dynamic context is a sophisticated task revealing some important and new aspects of optimal crime control. In particular, we will stress that optimal control theory and dynamic games are tools being suitable for investigating dynamic extensions of law enforcement.

One issue of the present paper is to show how the influence of reference groups to micro-behaviour may result in multiple equilibria. This ‘density-dependence’ and other inherent non-linearities imply the existence of thresholds separating basins of attractions for optimal paths. Instead of providing a systematic framework we illustrate our approach by several interesting examples of optimal law enforcement. In particular, our game-theoretic approach of law enforcement contains only a collection of preliminary ideas and unsolved examples rather a than general competitive approach to crime and punishment. We hope, however, that this material is useful for future work in a more systematic optimal dynamic law enforcement.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Econometrics, Operations Research and Systems Theory, Vienna University of Technology, Austria

    Gustav Feichtinger

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  1. Gustav Feichtinger
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Statistics and Operations Research, University of Graz, Universitätsstr. 15/E3, A-8010, Graz, Austria

    Ulrike Leopold-Wildburger

  2. Department of Econometrics, Operations Research and Systems Theory, University of Technology, Argentinierstr. 8/119, A-1040, Wien, Austria

    Gustav Feichtinger

  3. Faculty of Economics, University of Bielefeld, Postfach 1001 31, D-33501, Bielefeld, Germany

    Klaus-Peter Kistner

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© 1999 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Feichtinger, G. (1999). Dynamic Economic Models of Optimal Law Enforcement. In: Leopold-Wildburger, U., Feichtinger, G., Kistner, KP. (eds) Modelling and Decisions in Economics. Physica, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-12519-9_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-12519-9_16

  • Publisher Name: Physica, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-7908-2462-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-662-12519-9

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