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Willingness to Pay to Reduce White-Collar and Corporate Crime

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2015

Mark A. Cohen Open the ORCID record for Mark A. Cohen [Opens in a new window]
Mark A. Cohen*
Affiliation:
Justin Potter Professor of American Competitive Enterprise and Professor of Law, Vanderbilt University, USA University Fellow, Resources for the Future, 401 21st Avenue South, Nashville, TN 37203, USA, Phone: +1 615 322 0533, Fax +1 615 343 7177, e-mail: mark.cohen@owen.vanderbilt.edu
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Abstract

Consumer protection and financial regulatory agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) regulate various types of consumer, investor and financial frauds. Whether required or not, rulemaking proceedings oftentimes include some form of benefit-cost analysis. Thus, the benefits of proposed regulations – whether fully quantified or not – are an increasingly important component of rulemaking decisions. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the impact on victims in some cases includes significant time and financial hardships and even pain, suffering, and reduced quality of life. Further, the existence of these offenses causes nonvictims to take costly precautionary behavior and might even inhibit legitimate business activities. Yet, little is known about the true costs of consumer and financial crimes other than the out-of-pocket monetary losses incurred by victims. To the extent society wishes to optimally deter such crimes, without better data on nonmonetary costs, any benefit-cost analyses of criminal justice or prevention programs designed to reduce these crimes will inevitably underestimate program benefits. This paper provides an initial framework and empirical estimates of the willingness to pay (WTP) to reduce four types of white-collar and corporate offenses – consumer fraud, financial fraud, corporate crime, and corporate financial crime. Utilizing a contingent valuation survey approach that has been used to estimate the cost of street crimes, the average WTP for a 10% reduction in each of these four offenses is estimated to range between $35 and $85 per household. In the case of consumer fraud and financial fraud, where estimates of prevalence are available, this translates into a WTP of $1200 per consumer fraud and $12,000 for financial fraud. In contrast, the out-of-pocket costs to victims of consumer fraud have been estimated to average about $100, and about $200 to $250 for various types of financial frauds. These figures also compare favorably to the WTP for a reduced household burglary of $19,000.

Keywords

D18 (Consumer Protection)D61 (Cost-Benefit Analysis)G28 (Financial Institutions & Services: Government Policy & Regulation)K42 (Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law)consumer protectionfinancial fraudswhite-collar crimewillingness to pay
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , Summer 2015 , pp. 305 - 324
Copyright
© Society for Benefit-Cost Analysis 2015 

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