Essays in the economics of public enforcement of law

This dissertation consists of three essays on the economics of public enforcement of law. The economics of public enforcement of law seeks to characterize and analyze the behavior of government agents and potential lawbreakers and to modify existing practices to improve the efficiency and rationality of systems of criminal justice. In an empirical essay, I attempt to determine how state incarceration patterns respond to changes in crime rates, while in two theoretical studies, I suggest modifying criminal procedure to consider the inevitable lags between crime and punishment.; My first and second essays are theoretical studies with potentially important normative implications for criminal procedures. Both studies explore the implications of the interactions between discounting of the future by criminals and the ubiquitous lags between crime and punishment witnessed in all societies. The first essay develops a formal model of statutes of limitations. Because potential criminals tend to discount the future at higher rates than society, punishing crimes long after they are committed will be inefficient. Punishments after a long lag have only a nominal deterrent effect, while they may cost society substantial sums. Consequently, society may wish to constrain itself from punishing crimes long past.; My second essay explores the implications of lags between crime and punishment for equitable sentencing. Discounting implies that the same “nominal” sentence will have disparate discounted values when imposed after different lags. Because the mitigation of sentencing disparities is an important aim of criminal law, this paper proposes maintaining constant discounted sentencing terms by adjusting individual sanctions to account for the lag between crime and punishment.; In my third essay, I attempt to use the econometric technique of instrumental variables to gain a better understanding of the startling rise in the U.S. incarceration rate between 1970 and 2000. Using abortion rates in the 1970s as an instrument for crime rates from 1985–1997 to correct for endogeneity biases that may have plagued previous studies, I find that the estimated elasticity of prison admissions (a proxy for changes in incarceration rates) with respect to crime is approximately one, in accord with the “mechanical theory” of crime and incarceration.