Optimal Sharing of Foodborne Illness Prevention between Consumers and Industry: The Effect of Regulation and Liability
探讨消费者和食品行业在预防食源性疾病中的最优努力水平，并分析侵权和监管工具能否激励这种最优行为，考虑了努力相互影响和损害函数非凸性的复杂情况。
Consumers and the food industry can both prevent foodborne illness. Two questions are explored: what is the socially optimal level of preventative effort by each and can tort and regulatory instruments induce such behavior? Analysis is complicated by two aspects of food safety technology: one party's effort can affect the marginal effectiveness of the other party's effort and damage functions can be nonconvex. Previous analysis of accidents under torts and regulation fails to consider these generalizations. Indeed, results concerning the ability of tort and regulatory instruments to induce first‐best and second‐best behavior often contradict previous results in the literature.