Abstract

In this paper I show that penalties are not prices, and explain why the difference matters. In section one, I set up the problem which the following two sections will solve: namely, that it is easy enough to make certain kinds of penalties look just like prices. In section two, I lay out and dismantle an argument for reducing the former to the latter; and in section three I dismantle an argument for taking penalties and prices to be pragmatically equivalent, on the grounds that the essential function of both is to attach costs to actions