We report results from economic experiments that provide a direct test of the hypothesis that criminal behavior responds rationally to changes in the possible rewards and in the probability and severity of punishment. The experiments involve decisions that are best described as petty larceny,...

This paper attempts to forecast the change in adolescent childbearing among New York City residents following a ban on legalized abortion. With monthly data on the number of births to white and black adolescents from January, 1963 to December, 1987 we used an interrupted time-series analysis to...