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The Optimum Enforcement of Laws
Open accessAbstract
All prescriptions of behavior for individuals require enforcement.Usually the obligation to behave in a prescribed way is entered into voluntarily by explicit or implicit contract.For example, I promise to teach certain classes with designated frequency and to discuss matters which I, and possibly others, believe are relevant to the course titles.By negotiation, and in the event of its failure, by legal action, I and my employer seek to enforce the contract of employment against large departures from the promised behavior.Performance of some kinds of behavior is difficult or impossible to enforce-such as promises to be creative, noble, or steadfast in crisis-and as a result such contractual promises .are either not made or enforced only when there is an uncontroversially flagrant violation.The influence upon contract, and upon economic
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Cited by
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Raftery, A. E. (1995) · Sociological Methodology · doi:10.2307/271063 · Cited by 6,823
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Becker, G. S. (1993) · Journal of Political Economy · doi:10.1086/261880 · Cited by 1,609
The Economic Theory of Public Enforcement of Law
Polinsky, A. M., & Shavell, S. (2000) · Journal of Economic Literature · doi:10.1257/jel.38.1.45 · Cited by 1,159
Social License and Environmental Protection: Why Businesses Go Beyond Compliance
Gunningham, N., Kagan, R. A., & Thornton, D. (2004) · Law <html_ent glyph="@amp;" ascii="&"/> Social Inquiry · doi:10.1111/j.1747-4469.2004.tb00338.x · Cited by 868
Rose-Ackerman, S. (1975) · Journal of Public Economics · doi:10.1016/0047-2727(75)90017-1 · Cited by 769
Metadata
- Authors
- Stigler, G. J.
- Venue
- Journal of Political Economy
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 1970-05
- Volume
- 78
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 526-536
- ISSN
- 0022-3808 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-534X
- OpenAlex
- W2038663319
- Cited by
- 1,147
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 17.33
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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