There are few if any modern hazards and nuisances that affect as many people and have as high an “externality ratio” as illegal email spam, Justin M. Rao of Microsoft and David H. Reiley of Google write in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. The externality ratio of spam’s external costs (it dings U.S. firms and consumers for nearly $20 billion annually) to internal benefits (it brings its perpetrators about $200 million over the same period) is 100 to 1, which is about 10 times greater than automobile theft, for example, and 1,000 times greater than certain forms of air pollution. Spam accounts for 88% of worldwide email traffic.
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