Economic theory predicts that increasing the severity of punishments will deter criminal behavior by raising the … expected price of committing crime. This implicit price can be substantially raised by making prison sentences longer, but only …

This paper develops a model of crime in which human capital increases the opportunity cost of crime from foregone work … street (unskilled) crimes. White collar crimes decline less (or increase) with age and education. Predictions for age-crime … and education-crime relationships receive broad empirical support in self-report data from the National Longitudinal …

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 crime. These differences also have previously unrecognized effects on …

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 apply it to the case where guns are used for crime commission by … offenders and for self-protection by potential victims. Our analysis offers new insights about the association between crime and …

. While both economic and deterrence variables are important in explaining the decline in crime, the contribution of …

Inthis paper, the relationship between unemployment and property crime is investigated in the context of dynamic system … robbery, which is the most serious property crime. Unemployment by race (white, black, and Hispanic) also supports the above … finding. In general, the linkage between unemployment rate and property crime seems to become stronger as the degree of …

a model of the adjustment of sentences assuming that the state's objective is the optimal deterrence of crime. In the …

Theories of crime in economics focus on the roles of deterrence and incapacitation in reducing criminal activity. In … play a role in crime reduction. This paper extends the Becker-Ehrlich model to a standard labor supply model that includes … an individual chooses to engage in crime. Second, we show that whether the production of criminal activity is a …

on youth crime and delinquency. The offer to relocate to lower-poverty areas reduces arrests among female youth for … violent and property crimes, relative to a control group. For males the offer to relocate reduces arrests for violent crime …, at least in the short run, but increases problem behaviors and property crime arrests. The gender difference in treatment …