Can I read Welfare v. Consent: On the Optimal Penalty for Harassment on EtoBox?

Welfare v. Consent: On the Optimal Penalty for Harassment by Chaudhury, Ratul Das; Rai, Birendra; Wang, Liang Choon; Banerjee, Dyuti is a scholarly article available to read on EtoBox.

What is Welfare v. Consent: On the Optimal Penalty for Harassment about?

The economic approach to determine optimal legal policies involves maximizing a social welfare function. We propose an alternative: a consent-approach that seeks to promote consensual interactions and deter non-consensual interactions. The consent-approach does not rest upon inter-personal utility comparisons or value judgments about preferences. It does not require any additional information relative to the welfare-approach. We highlight the contrast between the welfare-approach and the consent-approach using a stylized model inspired by seminal cases of harassment and the #MeToo movement. The social welfare maximizing penalty for harassment in our model can be zero under the welfare-approach but not under the consent-approach.

Author

Chaudhury, Ratul Das; Rai, Birendra; Wang, Liang Choon; Banerjee, Dyuti

Published

2021

Language

EN