Welfare v. Consent: On the Optimal Penalty for Harassment

TL;DR

This paper compares welfare-based and consent-based approaches to setting penalties for harassment, proposing that a consent approach better promotes consensual interactions without relying on utility comparisons.

Contribution

It introduces a consent-approach to legal policy that avoids inter-personal utility judgments and demonstrates its implications through a stylized harassment model.

Findings

Welfare-maximizing penalty can be zero under the welfare approach.

Consent-approach leads to non-zero penalties to deter non-consensual interactions.

The consent-approach aligns with promoting consensual interactions without utility comparisons.

Abstract

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.