Cloninger (1992) applied the portfolio approach to criminal behaviour and illustrated the deterrent effect of capital punishment by use of data from 1983-1988 across the states of America and the District of Columbia. This comment suggests two possible flaws in Cloninger's analyses, which, if...

The strong association between unemployment and suicide was found in an examination of annual changes in both of these rates in the USA. However, the association between unemployment and suicide appears to be strong in the United States, but weak or non-existent in other nations.

Although it has been argued that unemployment results in an increased suicide rate in a society, this association was found in the present study in only a minority of a sample of nations with data available for the period 1950-85.

This review illustrates how a variety of economic models can be applied to suicidal behaviour, including a cost-benefit analysis, a demand-supply model, a labour force participation analogy, signalling game theory, investment under uncertainty, and economic definitions of irrationality.

In order to explore whether societies have a natural (nonzero) suicide rate, regression equations were derived predicting the suicide rate over the regions of 11 nations and over time in 13 nations from the divorce and unemployment rates. All of the regression equations had positive constant...