http://theunbrokenwindow.com/2010/02/04/mass-murder-at-the-margin/ The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. - F.A. Hayek Wed, 08 Feb 2012 16:43:18 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.3 http://theunbrokenwindow.com/2010/02/04/mass-murder-at-the-margin/comment-page-1/#comment-22581 The Unbroken Window » Blog Archive » Pulling Down the Pants of Marginal Incentives Wed, 23 Feb 2011 09:58:28 +0000 http://theunbrokenwindow.com/?p=2287#comment-22581 [...] Here is a long post discussing it in detail. A student of mine sent the following to me: I have a parallel to what we talked about in class last week. My old high school just imposed a suspension on pantsing people. My brother was given a two day suspension and in-school suspension for doing this as an example, before the rule was known about. The penalty is now a 5 day suspension. I was having a conversation with my mother about the punishment not fitting the crime and I explained to her that having a penalty like suspension for pantsing may lead to mass pantsing or pantsing the underwear as well because they would get suspended anyway and that the school probably made their problem worse. She laughed at me and told me that high schoolers, specifically the young boys, don’t think that way and that the effect probably wouldn’t be as I described. I was wondering what you thought of this. [...] [...] Here is a long post discussing it in detail. A student of mine sent the following to me: I have a parallel to what we talked about in class last week. My old high school just imposed a suspension on pantsing people. My brother was given a two day suspension and in-school suspension for doing this as an example, before the rule was known about. The penalty is now a 5 day suspension. I was having a conversation with my mother about the punishment not fitting the crime and I explained to her that having a penalty like suspension for pantsing may lead to mass pantsing or pantsing the underwear as well because they would get suspended anyway and that the school probably made their problem worse. She laughed at me and told me that high schoolers, specifically the young boys, don’t think that way and that the effect probably wouldn’t be as I described. I was wondering what you thought of this. [...]

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