When is it better for the government to provide information, and when is this role better left to the market? I present a simple framework for evaluating this question, where the key factors are the cost of errors based on imperfect information and whether information is eventually revealed to...

When one victim's precautions against crime have spillover benefits to other victims, individuals do not take the socially optimal amount of precaution. I explore the use of criminal sanctions as a mechanism to correct this: Criminals are punished based on the level of precaution taken by the...