Shadow pricing utilitarian justice: some tentative estimates

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to recognise and provide an approach to estimate the value of an institution that produces a public good to the wealth of a nation. Specifically, the authors value utilitarian justice.Design/methodology/approachThe paper employs the classical economic theories of crime and shadow pricing to estimate the total economic value and shadow prices or social productivity of police and higher court deterrence. These measures are estimated using the definitions provided by Dasgupta and by re-engineering key deterrence elasticity estimates gleaned from Australian econometric studies.FindingsThe empirical findings suggest a relatively high social value for police and higher court deterrence. Notwithstanding, addressing socio-economic disadvantage is likely to prevent more subsequent offences than directing more resources to the operation of the criminal justice system.Research limitations/implicationsThe key limitations involve the sensitivity of the estimates to error. Further work is required on all the estimates in the model and in particular the social costs of the serious offences. The next step is to estimate the opportunity cost of supplying police and court deterrence. The cost estimate can then be combined with the estimates of social benefits to estimate a benefit-cost ratio. The model in broad terms demonstrates a way forward to estimating the economic value of and the social productivity of the criminal justice system. The provision of retributive justice is also ignored in this contribution. This requires a separate analysis.Social implicationsThe social implications are that there appears a way to both justify and evaluate the criminal justice system and this methodology may be applied to the operation of other public services.Originality/valueThe originality of this paper lies in suggesting a method to solve the valuation problem for the jointly produced public goods of the higher courts and police.

Shadow Pricing of Electric Power Interruptions for Distribution System Operators in Finland

Increasing distributed generation and intermittencies, along with the increasing frequency of extreme weather events, impose a serious challenge for electric power supply security. Understanding the costs of interruption is vital in terms of enhancing the power system infrastructure and planning the distribution grid. Furthermore, customer rights and demand response techniques are further reasons to study the worth of power reliability. In this paper, the authors make use of directional distance function and shadow pricing methods in a case study of Finland. The aim is to calculate the cost of one minute of power interruption from the perspective of the distribution network operator. The sample consists of 78 distribution network operators from Finland, and uses cost and network information between 2013 and 2015.

Shadow Pricing of Electric Power Interruptions for Distribution System Operators in Finland

Increasing distributed generation and intermittency, along with the increasing frequency of extreme weather events, impose a serious challenge for the electric power supply security. Understanding the costs of interruption is vital in terms of enhancing the power system infrastructure and planning the distribution grid. On the other hand, customer rights and demand response techniques are further reasons to study the worth of power reliability. In this paper, the authors make use of directional distance function and shadow pricing method for a case study from Finland. The aim is to calculate the cost of one minute of power interruption from the distribution network operator perspective. The sample consists of 78 distribution network operators from Finland with cost and network information between 2013 and 2015.

Sacred versus Pseudo-Sacred Values: How People Cope with Taboo Trade-Offs

Psychologists have documented widespread public deference to “sacred values” that communities, formally or informally, exempt from tradeoffs with secular limits, like money. This work has, however, been largely confined to low-stakes settings. As the stakes rise, deference must decline because people can't write blank checks for every “sacred” cause. Shadow pricing is inevitable which sets the stage for political blame-games of varying sophistication. In a rational world, citizens would accept the necessity of such tradeoffs, but the attraction to moral absolutes is strong--perhaps even essential for social cohesion.