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American Law and Economics Review Advance Access originally published online on August 28, 2008
American Law and Economics Review 2008 10(2):388-423; doi:10.1093/aler/ahn013
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Law and Economics Association. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

The Optimal Penalty for Sexually Transmitting HIV

Andrew M. Francis and Hugo M. Mialon

Emory University

Send correspondence to: Andrew Francis and Hugo Mialon, Department of Economics, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322-2240, USA; E-mail: andrew.francis{at}emory.edu; hmialon{at}emory.edu.

JEL Classification: I18, K14, D8


  Abstract

We develop an endogenous signaling model of sexual behavior and testing under risk of HIV infection to determine whether current criminal laws against exposure to HIV are efficient and to identify the socially optimal law. We consider a law to be socially optimal if it induces information revelation, so that non-fully-informed HIV transmission does not occur. We find that current HIV-specific criminal laws in the United States, which stipulate a single penalty for knowingly exposing another individual to risk of HIV infection, are not generally optimal. The optimal law stipulates a single penalty for knowingly or unknowingly transmitting HIV, and no penalty for exposing another individual to risk of infection without transmitting the virus. The optimal expected penalty is estimated to be approximately 1–2 years of prison.

We are tremendously grateful to Steven Shavell, Sue Mialon, and anonymous referees for insightful suggestions.


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