This paper develops a model of crime in which human capital increases the opportunity cost of crime from foregone work and expected costs associated with incarceration. Older, more intelligent, and more educated adults should commit fewer street (unskilled) crimes. White collar crimes decline...

We present a simple model of the effects of hate crime legislation. It shows that even if the direct harm to victims of hate crime is the same as for other crimes, because of other differences in the effects it may still be optimal to exert more law-enforcement effort to deter or prevent hate...

This paper presents a new, dynamic economic model of criminal activity. Individuals are endowed with legal and criminal human capital. Potential incomes in legal and criminal sectors depend on the level of the relevant human capital, the rate of return, and random shocks. Both types of human...

This article analyzes corruption of law enforcement agents: payment of bribes to agents so that they will not report violations. Corruption dilutes deterrence because bribe payments are less than sanctions. The state may not be able to offset this effect of bribery by raising sanctions for the...

It is typically difficult to differentiate empirically between deterrence and incapacitation since both are a function of expected punishment. In this paper we demonstrate that the introduction of sentence enhancements (i.e. increased punishments that are added on to prison sentences that would...

This paper analyzes optimal fines in a model in which individuals can commit up to two offenses. The fine for the second offense is allowed to differ from the fine for the first offense. There are four natural cases in the model, defined by assumptions about the gains to individuals from...

Some of the costs of enforcing laws are fixed" - - in the sense that they do not depend on the number of individuals who commit harmful acts- -while other costs are "variable"- - they rise with the number of such individuals. This article analyzes the effects of fixed and variable enforcement...

This paper examines the use of fines and imprisonment to deter individuals from engaging in harmful activities. These sanctions are analyzed separately as well as together, first for identical risk-neutral individuals and then for two groups of risk-neutral individuals who differ by wealth. When...

The interaction between offenders and potential victims has so far received relatively little attention in the literature on the economics of crime. The main objective of this paper is twofold: to extend the "market for offenses model" to deal with both "product" and "factor" markets, and to...

Part of the debate over the control of drug activity in cities is concerned with the effectiveness of implementing demand- versus supply-side drug policies. This paper is motivated by the relative lack of research providing formal economic underpinning for the implementation of either policy. We...