We test the rational economic model of marginal deterrence of law enforcement - i.e., the need for graduating the penalty to the severity of the crime. We combine individual-level data on sentence length for a representative sample of US inmates with proxies for maximum punishment and monitoring...

I present the following proposal: information revealed during non-cartel investigations by competition law enforcement authorities, such as evaluation of M&As or investigation of monopolization (dominance) conduct, should be directly used to investigate and prosecute cartels. Currently, in...

Provided that the literature on the deterrent effect of capital punishment is overall inconclusive, the fact that individual authors persistently claim to have found solid evidence in one or the other direction raises two questions. Firstly, what are the causes for these different results? Do...

Two countries set their enforcement non-cooperatively to deter native and foreign individuals from committing crime in their territory. Crime is mobile, ex ante (migration) and ex post (fleeing), and criminals hiding abroad after having com- mitted a crime in a country must be extradited back....

This paper is the first to analyse the three-way relationship among money laundering, anti-money-laundering efforts and corruption. On the one hand, if we assume that the goal of criminals involved in corruption is to minimize the probability of being detected, then corruption represents a...

This paper offers a new argument for why a more aggressive enforcement of minor offenses ( zero-tolerance') may yield a double dividend in that it reduces both minor offenses and more severe crime. We develop a model of criminal subcultures in which people gain social status among their peers...

In the course of history, a large number of politicians have been assassinated. Rational choice hypotheses are developed and tested using panel data covering more than 100 countries over a period of 20 years. Several strategies, in addition to security measures, are shown to significantly reduce...

In 2007, the Wall Street Journal published an article claiming that each execution saves more than 70 lives. This example is used to show how easy it is, using simple or advanced econometric techniques, to produce results that do or do not support the deterrence hypothesis. Moreover, we also...

This paper studies how the swiftness and delay of punishment affect behavior. Using rich administrative data from automated speed cameras, we exploit two (quasi-)experimental sources of variation in the time between a speeding offense and the sending of a ticket. At the launch of the speed...

Compiling data from dozens of archival sources, I compile the most extensive series to date of the long-run imprisonment rate for five English-speaking nations: Australia, Canada, England and Wales, New Zealand and the United States. These series are constructed as a share of adults rather than...