Criminal law enforcement depends on the actions of public agents such as police officers, but the resulting agency problems have been neglected in the law and economics literature (especially outside the specific context of corruption). We develop an agency model of police behavior that...

This is a survey of economic analysis of law, that is, of the emerging field under which the standard tools of microeconomics are employed to identify the effects of legal rules and their social desirability. Five basic subject areas are covered. The first is legal liability for harm. Here we...

Expressive crime contrasts with instrumental crime in that delinquents do not seek material benefits. Law breakers are motivated by the desire to ‘make a statement’, possibly against majority attitudes in the society. Fighting expressive crime is complicated by this fact in that increasing...