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Optimal Law Enforcement with Legal Aid
Author(s) -
Garoupa Nuno,
Stephen Frank H
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
economica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.532
H-Index - 65
eISSN - 1468-0335
pISSN - 0013-0427
DOI - 10.1111/j.0013-0427.2004.00382.x
Subject(s) - deterrence (psychology) , enforcement , law enforcement , deterrence theory , pessimism , order (exchange) , government (linguistics) , law , law and economics , welfare , business , economics , political science , philosophy , linguistics , epistemology , finance
The economic literature on enforcement is generally pessimistic concerning the use of legal aid. In this paper we show that legal aid can be a part of optimal law enforcement. The rationale behind our result is that with legal aid, in a system with legal or judicial error both guilty and innocent individuals are better off, because the marginal cost of defence expenditure is reduced. If, on average, legal aid helps the innocent more than the guilty, a government seeking to maximize social welfare will want to use it in order to increase deterrence.