DO People Want Optimal Deterrence?

By Cass R. Sunstein, D. Schkade, Daniel Kahneman. The Journal of Legal Studies, 2000

235 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Two studies test whether people believe in optimal deterrence. The first provides people with personal injury cases that are identical except for variations in the probability of detection and explores whether lower probability cases produce higher punitive damage awards and whether higher probability cases produce lower awards. No such effect is observed. The second asks people whether they agree or disagree with administrative and judicial policies that increase penalties when the probability of detection is low and decrease penalties when the probability of detection is high. Substantial majorities reject these administrative and judicial policies. Policy implications for the role of the jury in achieving deterrence are explored.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, General Decision Sciences

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/da4e6db21a74dede02cfe759104b949c7cb0c40e

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

1. P. Mazzocco
2. Philip Tetlock

In General Decision Sciences

1. Philip Tetlock
2. Celia Moore
3. Brad N. Greenwood
4. Seth Carnahan
5. G. Johns

Citations in the corpus

• Achieving Compliance when Legal Sanctions are Non-Deterrent (2006, unknown): “Hence, we do not analyze whether people prefer non-deterrent sanctions over deterrent sanctions (see Sunstein et al. 2000).”