Becker, Gary S.; Murphy, Kevin M.; Grossman, Michael - In: Journal of Political Economy 114 (2006) 1, pp. 38-60
This paper considers the costs of reducing consumption of a good by making its production illegal and punishing apprehended illegal producers. We use illegal drugs as a prominent example. We show that the more inelastic either demand for or supply of a good is, the greater the increase in social...