Sentencing policy, implied demographic welfare weights, and the theory of sentencing reform

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Waldfogel, J
• 署名单位: National Bureau of Economic Research; Yale University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/0047-2727(95)01498-5
• 发表日期: 1996
• 页码: 177-193
• 关键词: welfare weights; crime; sentencing reform

摘要

Different groups of people experience varying degrees of different externalities. By a government's choice of expenditures to control externalities, it affects different members of the population differently. These choices implicitly ''value'' the welfare of members of different groups. This paper adapts the framework developed by Ahmad and Stern (Journal of Public Economics, 1984, 25, 259-298) to infer welfare weights underlying a system of commodity taxation, to infer the welfare weights implicitly attached to different population groups by US sentencing policy. Welfare-improving directions of sentencing reform are also calculated.