Lessons from the Economics of Crime

What have the economists contributed to the study of criminal behavior and crime control? In what follows, to motivate and describe the contributions to this edited volume, we discuss three domains: • A normative framework for evaluating criminal law and crime prevention, and the application of sophisticated quantitative methods to analyze the causes of crime and the effects of crime-control measures in this framework; • The conception of criminal behavior as individual choice, influenced by perceived consequences; • The aggregation of individual choices to a systems framework for understanding crime rates and patterns. The papers in this volume are informed by and contribute to all of these domains