This paper argues that the “Economics of Crime” concentrates too much on punishment as a policy to fight crime, which … is unwise for several reasons. There are important instances in which punishment simply cannot reduce crime. Several … feasible alternatives to punishment exist, such as offering positive incentives or handing out awards for law abiding behavior …

This paper provides evidence that free riders are heavily punished even if punishment is costly and does not provide … punished. As a consequence, the existence of an opportunity for costly punishment causes a large increase in cooperation levels … because potential free riders face a credible threat. We show, in particular, that in the presence of a costly punishment …

success of the program, i.e., whether burglaries continue to occur. We show that the punishment of burglars plays a dual role … in this context. On the one hand, punishment deters burglaries if the level of punishment is sufficiently high. On the … punishment is suboptimal. In a second part, we extend our model to the study of norm enforcement in public goods dilemmas and …

regular citizens do not become more dishonest in response to crime-related reminders. Moreover, our experimental measure of …