[FoRK] Formula for breaking the law

[Jeff Bone]

My earlier formulation was both imprecise and incorrect.  Here's a  
second attempt:

     L ~= B / eC + c

   L is likelihood of any given person breaking a particular law
   B is the benefit *to that person* (in economic terms) of breaking  
the law
   e is the likelihood of that person getting caught (enforcement)
   C is the cost to that person (in economic terms) if caught
   c is the cost to that person for breaking the law, independent of  
any enforcement

I.e., the likelihood of any person breaking any given law is  
proportional to the ratio between the benefit of breaking the law and  
all the probable costs.  Note that B, C, and c are all relative to the  
individual in question's own value system;  you can map each of those  
into economic terms, but mapping those values across people might be  
difficult without some market mechanism...  (hmm...)

Luis speculates that some people may place value on obeying laws for  
their own sake;  well, whatever, that goes into c.  I would argue,  
though, that there's obviously not some very significant near- 
universal value placed on obeying laws for their own sake, otherwise  
everyone would always drive the speed limit --- which, clearly, almost  
nobody does all the time.  Different people, obviously, assign  
different values to these variables.

I will further speculate that the incidence of law-breaking overall  
for some law and some population is proportional to, if not exactly  
equivalent to (which might be possible if you have some kind of  
normalization of the values of the variables across people, but  
Arrow's Paradox suggests that might not be possible) the sum of the  
values of L for each person for their own specific values for the  
variables in that equation divided by the size of the population.

Not going to bother with the formula for that, though. ;-)  Will leave  
that to a Real Economist. (tm)

$0.02,

jb

PS - for a less Saturday Morning treatment of same, consult an  
economist.  Perhaps David Friedman:

   http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Price_Theory/PThy_Chapter_20/PThy_Chapter_20.html