Buenos Aires' Dog Poo Problem  A blog about business and
economics. Oct. 15 2012 12:07 PM  Buenos Aires' Dog Poo Problem
Natalie Schachar has a great piece about the widespread dogshit
everywhere on the sidewalk in Buenos Aires.  This is one of
these things where you see how rules and norms interact. The
fact that in major American cities people generally clean up
after their dogs is clearly related to the laws on the books
about this, but it's also clearly the case that in practice
police departments are not dedicating vast resources to the
issue. And in fact though the gains from not having dog shit on
the sidewalk are meaningful, they're relatively small compared
to the costs of a rigorous enforcement of pooper scooper laws.
But what I recall from growing up in New York in the eighties is
that the norms shifted to the point where enforcement costs are
now very low simply because there's not that much violation.
You see this kind of thing all the time. Where violations are
rare, the rareness of violation