Until the seventeenth century, the Ottomans used fines extensively for law enforcement and employed agents to collect the fines. Fines can be costly to implement because of agency problems and corruption. To solve the problem of corruption, the Ottomans implemented a variety of mechanisms,...

There appear to be two seemingly contradictory images of economic change in the Islamic World and mixed evidence on whether Islamic societies have been open or conservative against modern ideas, technological advancements, and legal developments. Whereas a conservative attitude has been dominant...

This paper examines the optimal use of criminal solicitation as a law enforcement strategy. The benefits are greater deterrence of crime (due to the greater likelihood of apprehension), and the savings in social harm as some offenders are diverted away from committing actual crimes through...

Modern-day piracy on the high seas once again poses a serious threat to international shipping. This paper develops an economic of model of piracy that emphasizes the strategic interaction between pirates (offenders) and shippers (victims), a factor not previously studied in the law enforcement...

Article 100 of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea requires signatories to “cooperate” against maritime piracy, but “cooperate” is undefined. Enforcement is a public good – creating uncompensated benefits for others, so suffering from free-rider problems. Our analysis readily...

This paper uses a similar theoretical approach to that in the modern literature on the propagation of civil wars to assess the causes of the American Revolution. Economic causes are weighed relative to political causes as a contribution to the more than 200-year inconclusive debate among...

This essay provides and economic analysis of the problem of modern-day maritime piracy. The essay first reviews the current scope of the problem, and then develops an economic of model of piracy that emphasizes the strategic interaction between the efforts of pirates to locate potential targets,...

Asset forfeiture laws allow the seizure of assets used in the commission of a crime. This paper examines the impact of such laws on deterrence by incorporating the possibility of asset forfeiture into the standard economic model of crime. When punishment is by a fine that can be optimally...

The concept of collective responsibility, or group punishment, for crimes or other harmful acts was a pervasive feature of ancient societies, as exemplified by the Roman doctrines of quasi-delicts and noxal liability, and the Greek notion of “pollution.” This chapter briefly surveys...

The standard economic model of crime since Becker (1968) is primarily concerned with deterrence. Actual punishment policies, however, appear to rely on imprisonment to a greater extent than is prescribed by that model. One reason may be the incapacitation function of prison. The model developed...