15 May 2006

Here are Eric Rasmusen's 2006 Michigan Annual Judicial Conference files.

Overheads: The powerpoint files for both hours are here in one file. You can download a free Powerpoint viewer program here.

Handouts: The first hour and second hour handouts

Miscellaneous Things I Mentioned:

The 2003 Sourcebook of criminal justice statistics
Enrique Díaz-Aranda Criminality and criminal law in Mexico. Where are we going?, INSTITUTO DE INVESTIGACIONES JURÍDICAS NUMBER 6 JULY-DECEMBER 2006
William J. Stuntz , THE POLITICAL CONSTITUTION OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE, 119 Harv. L. Rev. 780 (2006)
"Selective Prosecution: Durham Rape Case Witness Arrested"
"'Let burglars off with caution', police told" Daily Mirror, 3rd April 2006
James Fitzjames Stephen, "The Doctrine of Liberty in Its Application to Morals," Chapter IV of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Hypertext by Terrence Berres, London: Smith, Elder, & Co. (1873) (my source here).
"Why a London Pol Thinks These Ladies Shouldn't Get Calls; He Asks Cellphone Companies to Hang Up on Prostitutes; Fake Cards, CEO Numbers," David Pringle, The Wall Street Journal, 7 February 2005, p. A.1.
Eric Rasmusen, Measuring Judicial Independence: The Political Economy of Judging in Japan, University of Chicago Press, February 2003 (with J. Mark Ramseyer). A book on the Japanese judiciary based on the various articles we have written, but with new material and better presentations of many of the old regressions (we present marginal effects now in the tobits). The website is at (http://rasmusen.org/published/jbook/jbook.htm.).
Eric Rasmusen, "The Economics of Desecration: Flag Burning and Related Activities." Journal of Legal Studies (June 1998) 27(2): 245- 270 (lead article). When a symbol is desecrated, the desecrator obtains benefits while those who venerate the symbol incur costs. The approach to policy used in this paper is to ask whether the benefits are likely to exceed the costs. I conclude that they usually do not. Desecration is often motivated by a desire to reduce the utility of others, which generally is inefficient. Also, if desecration occurs, people have less incentive to create and maintain symbols. Symbols, like other produced goods, need property- rights protection if the outcome is to be efficient. Laws against desecration are a good way to provide this protection, given the likely failure of the Coase Theorem and the possibility of efficient breaking of the laws. (http://rasmusen.org/published/Rasmusen_98JLS.flag.pdf).
"Stigma and Self-Fulfilling Expectations of Criminality ," Journal of Law and Economics 39: 519-544 (October 1996). In modelling crime, economists have focussed on the expected cost of government sanctions to the criminal, but private sanctions--- notably economic or social stigma--- may be just as important. In the model here, workers decide whether to commit crimes and employers decide how much to pay ex- convicts. In one equilibrium, individuals refrain from crime and economic stigma--- the wage loss from conviction--- is high. In a second, pareto- inferior equilibrium, individuals commit crimes and stigma is low, because employers realize that nonconviction does not imply noncriminality. The model may help to explain large shifts in crime, such as that between 1960 and 1980, in which decreases and increases in government sanctions seem to have asymmetric effects. (http://rasmusen.org/published/Rasmusen_96JLE.stigma.pdf).

This page is at http://rasmusen.org/special/crime.